


Millions of Miles from Home

by sabrina



Series: They Haunt Us Still [2]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Legends: New Jedi Order Era - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Force-Sensitive Finn, Found Family, Kylo Ren and Rey Are Related, M/M, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Mother-Son Relationship, Not Canon Compliant, Parent-Child Relationship, Rey Solo, The Skywalker/Solo family puts the fun in dysfunctional, Unapologetically adding more Solo kids to the TFA universe, universe hopping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-30
Updated: 2017-05-02
Packaged: 2018-06-08 19:09:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 97,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6869827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sabrina/pseuds/sabrina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Family is family. Even family across timelines is still <i>your</i> family. Anakin Solo joins his sister, Rey, on a trip into the past, to bring their brother Ben back in the present.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There doesn't seem to be a good way to write a prologue - outside of posting it as its own thing outside of a work - so it's posted as chapter one (technically speaking), but this is more a prologue than it is a chapter, both in length and also timeline.

_Raxus Prime_  
3 weeks ago

 

_Size doesn't matter._

It had been a mantra when he was a boy repeated over and over, and his very real suspicion was that it had been only to make certain he felt that much more pathetic when he couldn't do something. If size didn't matter, if none of it mattered, then why did he fail when he was born to succeed? 

Then Snoke and his lack of limitations and willingness to embrace all strength had allowed him to see how little size did matter.

It was a yacht, a space yacht, not a blaster bolt, or a human being, but size _didn't_ matter. So he held it back in the Force to keep it from speeding away, and while he might not be able to pull it into the cavern for good, the Octab corporation would have people on the way. Ships and soldiers and the like. And if size didn't matter at all then he could…

The connection was tampered with, the push of another Force sense against his own and the hold wavered.

The pressure of connection on the yacht was significant enough to insure that when the link was severed the force of it knocked Kylo Ren backwards. He hit the edge of the ramp on his shuttle with a thud that echoed through the chamber, and a fresh burst of pain swept through him from his ribs down to his hip and up through his shoulders, possibly ripping open something from Starkiller that hadn't healed. In the Force he could feel the boy he'd fought, and the ships move lightly, and then he felt the sense of all of it accelerating away from him, and then nothing. 

Silence rested heavy in the chamber and then rage, frustration, and fear boiled over. 

Kylo screamed, pounding a fist on the metal of the loading ramp. It sent sharp pain echoing down his arm and the force of the scream itself brought pebbles from the ceiling of the cavern rained down on him. 

What had just happened was thoroughly impossible. Ben had a sister. A long time ago he'd had a sister, and he'd lost her. But Ben had never had a brother. There had been only that sister, that sister that meant nothing to Kylo Ren, because she no longer existed. (Although this was a truth that he didn't entirely believe anymore. It was a truth that had been challenged, and Kylo was finding it increasingly difficult to live with the insecurity of not knowing, but he knew he didn't have a brother. He _knew_ that.) 

And this boy - because he was _just_ a boy - he claimed to be the grandson of Anakin Skywalker - but it was impossible. He had memories of Han Solo, but that was also impossible. He held Kylo's grandfather's Jedi name with such ease and confidence, and skill, and _lies_ : They were all lies. They _had_ to be lies. 

With the immediate danger of being killed by this imposter to his grandfather's legacy having passed. Kylo allowed himself the moment's luxury to stay prone against the ramp. His torso and abdomen ached. Every thought felt fractured having only a half-life. Kylo Ren blew his breath out. He'd been in worse pain than this before and this was nothing. 

_Nothing_. 

Focus. 

The security breach below would be recognized by the industrial complex above. He could observe blaster and canon fire in the distance. Currently that fire was focused on the yacht that had gotten away from him. But eventually it would bring people down to these levels for a sweep, and Kylo needed to be gone when those security sweeps were made. Snoke had told him that his presence should not be noted, but his body felt pinned to the ground, too heavy to move on his own, or even with the Force. 

Had he finished what he needed to do here? 

No. 

He felt terrible. 

Not just physically. He could keep going through pain. This was different, more crucial, something deep inside of him that was screaming yet and couldn't let go. 

Focus: How he felt didn't matter. 

It just didn't. He might feel terrible and he might not want to move, but it couldn't stop him from doing what needed to be done. He was meant to be training. He had already failed once this year and he could not fail again. And thinking on the failures past would not keep from failing in this moment and would likely only ensure it.

Therefore, objective: get up, get moving. 

Kylo pushed himself to his feet and used the Force to pull his lightsaber from across the room to his side. Connecting it to his belt, he ignored the room and strode up the ramp into his shuttle more steadily than his physical condition should have allowed. 

This provided him the observation, made somewhat smugly, that he was not always a failure. 

Destiny was important. He had learned that from his Grandfather. From _his_ Grandfather who arguably Kylo understood better than anyone else. 

That belief might prove itself to be a cornerstone upon which if it fell, all of his ability to keep moving would tumble with it. 

Ignore that. Continue. 

He keyed in the code to bring up the ramp and stalked to the cockpit to start the engine sequence while he ignored tugging further on that cornerstone. 

But if he had failed today, which he feared somehow he might have, it had to only be understandable. When faced with a brother you should not have, a brother who looked much like the... family you had left behind surely you could not be expected to take that with stone-like indifference. The Supreme Leader would understand that and he would take the information and together they would find a way to deal with this unexpected blow.

But was it even an unexpected _blow_? More a set-back and a casual set-back at that.

That was it. 

Not a drastic situation, just a set-back to his training and unfortunate, but surmountable. If he considered it in this reframing, it felt like he could move through what would be required after all. 

As the ship's indicators lit affirmative, Kylo pushed down on the lever to pull it out of the docking bay, then the preparation for take-off itself, and as the wings lowed he did the final cross check before pushing the ship up and leaving the toxic atmosphere of Raxus Prime beneath him. As the red swirl of acid and toxic waste faded, Kylo plotted in the course for a rendezvous with the _Finalizer_ and pushed the ship into hyperspace. 

As the lines formed and then blurred outside the glass of the cockpit, Kylo slumped over, protecting his side as he prodded his injuries with the Force while trying to determine the best course of action while he traveled.

He'd not had to speak to anyone. No one had learned this particular failure. Perhaps even Snoke did not need to learn of it. Could he keep the knowledge of this new-found brother from Snoke? Did he want to? 

He considered this. It seemed he did, or he would not have asked himself the question. 

Why?

The question sat unanswered in his mind and Kylo stared at the lines as if they might help him pick through it. The ache in his ribs was what finally moved him from the pilot's seat. He made his way back, pulled out a first-aid kit with one hand, and considered. After a moment's thought he removed his hooded cloak, pulled off his shirt, and considered the abdomen that was turning its own shade of mottled blue. He stared at it perplexed. He hadn't realized quite how hard he had dropped against the ramp. It had hurt, yes, but this was an immediate fury in the cells underneath the skin. He reached for a bacta patch and peeled off the backing to activate it, and put it over the worst of the ribs. 

"Grandfather, I'm doing what you would have wanted." 

There was only silence in the room to answer Kylo's words leaving him feeling oddly out of place having spoken aloud as he just had. He leaned forward so that his elbows would rest on his knees, his head finding its place in his hands and he stayed there despite the protesting of muscles across chest. They were protests that lessened with the work of the bacta patch against his skin, but the ache remained, raw and distracting.

Observation, less terrifying than the idea that he might want to hide the new enemy from Snoke: the Jedi had been competent. He had performed very well- well trained and fearless, and able to adapt when pressed. Kylo had hurt him, yes, but it had not been something that had been accomplished easily and without any effort. Part of him wondered what he and this 'brother' might do together, and part of him had no interest in someone who could tear at the legacy that Kylo was trying to serve. 

" _Grandfather._ " 

There was no ghost that answered him. 

There hadn't been for a long time. Kylo tried not to think on what that might indicate, but the words spilled out despite himself. 

"I have tried to be strong, to do as you would have done, to _not_ fail. But I have weaknesses."

This admission was raw and hung heavily in the ship as Kylo's heart seemed to beat faster as if the admission itself aloud in the middle of space might bring his master down on him to throw him out. The entire point of this trip had been to learn from the holocron his grandfather had put together. It had been to overcome his own weaknesses by understanding better his grandfather's strengths. 

"I will overcome them. I _will_. I swear. I swear it." 

The words came out in a whispered promise, and despite the pain that lingered from his injuries, Kylo sank to the floor on his knees, his body crouched over his knees so that his elbows came down to the floor too and he sat there hovering somewhere between overgrown child or religious guru in worship or meditation. 

It was only a name. It might have been a falsehood - if one the boy had believed completely. The memories that Kylo had found could only have been planted as falsehoods by someone of great skill. Someone beyond even Skywalker's skill level. But it was madness? The idea of a galaxy where Kylo Ren did not exist, and this Anakin Solo did? It felt like madness. If one were to create a lie were there not more readily believable ones?

But, and here was an important crux: if it were a lie, then it was nothing. And if it were a lie then there was no need to speak with Snoke about it because it was indicative of nothing meaningful - only madness. 

_And if it is truth?_

Why did he not want to speak to Snoke about it? 

Kylo moaned into the floor of the shuttle and rolled to his side, feeling childish and pathetic as he curled with his knees to his chest. He wanted his cloak. He would be more comfortable in his bed. 

Observation, unwanted: he wanted to punish himself for the failure of not vanquishing this imposter so easily in the first place. He had been distracted - it wouldn't happen again. And if there were questions about what his Grandfather would have wanted - and there _weren't_ but _if_ there were - then he would find the answers, whatever methods were required to do so. 

When he stopped feeling like such a child. 

No. He was not a child. He could move. He could do what was needed of him. 

What was needed was thinking clearly about options. 

So focus. Stop lying on the floor of your command shuttle. Begin behaving as if you deserve the command shuttle and the responsibility and freedom offered you as a part of its ownership. 

His eyes closed and for a moment he gathered strength, not from the Force directly, but from the knowledge that only he could do this. That when he docked with the _Finalizer_ he would need a plan. That Snoke might be here, in his head overhearing all of this, and he needed a response. 

He pushed himself up and reached for the cloak and pulled it over his shoulders before standing and straightening. This realignment of his physical posture helped, despite the pull the motion put against the bacta patches still on his stomach. 

What would Snoke say? 

Was it possible he already knew? Yes. He had always been generous enough with Kylo's requests to find out more about his Grandfather. Perhaps he had even accelerated these requests and given supplies to make the quest easier for Kylo to accomplish. Thus, objectively, it seemed unlikely he would suddenly bulk at Kylo's request to return to studying his grandfather. 

Objectively.

However, there was the fact that his Grandfather's weakness had been family, would Snoke see the brother Kylo had been previously unaware of and believe him a similar weakness? If so, would he deny Kylo the opportunity to study his grandfather further, lest he follow that same path? 

That was illogical. Kylo understood the mistakes his grandfather had made, and he knew better than anyone what would be necessary to keep from straying there. He had been willing to kill Han Solo after all. 

_But it did not make you stronger._

"Shut up," he muttered to the voice, uncertain where it was even coming from. It didn't feel like a ghost, just his own thoughts hijacking him. Nothing more than that. Nothing more. 

But if there was the possibility that Snoke might say no, could Kylo risk it? 

He felt traitorous to even consider it. The sort of thought that surely Snoke would overhear and would know about already.

But upon examination, Kylo didn't feel Snoke eavesdropping on all of this. It didn't mean that he wasn't, of course. There was no strict guarantee of it, but in this particular moment, Kylo felt as if he were alone in his own thoughts. 

Learn more. 

It was a reasonable objective, if he were thinking logically about it. Learning more would allow him to provide additional information to Snoke about himself, the fight, and the identity of the boy he had fought. Snoke would be pleased to have additional information when it was provided. Hux could perhaps assist Kylo in finding it. 

This brought a frown to his face as he stepped into the cockpit to check the current status of his journey. Should he bring Hux into something this important? A year ago he would have laughed at that idea completely, but after Starkiller the notion gave him more pause. Something in Hux had shifted, or perhaps something in Kylo had - and like this impossible brother Kylo hadn't explained this shift to Snoke. 

_He would have reason to question your loyalty._

"Shut up. He doesn't." 

_Your grandfather's attachments were his undoing, be sure they do not become yours._

"They aren't. I'm not bringing him in yet." 

the question of Hux was a question he could answer only when he returned to the _Finalizer_ and only after he had done some of his own investigating - only after he might have exhausted his own abilities would he consider Hux's people. That was a logical play. 

He was setting his own course, allowing no attachment to overwhelm him but seeking instead logical information to move forward. He was just being logical.


	2. Rey

Waking up with a cup of water next to her was a luxury that Rey didn't think she would ever get used to. Not really. It felt ridiculously extravagant, like showers, or the fact that the bed was generally dust free. Even the Falcon, for all its quirks maintained a generally clean bed, and had more water available than she'd ever had in her entire life. It could make her feel guilty knowing that on Jakku the water just to drink was a luxury for so many. 

With her Uncle it had been easier. Where Luke was everything had felt a little less plentiful - at least in terms of food although the water had been easier to come by than on Jakku - and that scarcity had grounded her first steps into training. 

This morning though, the water by the side of the bed should have been the most believable thing about her life by far. The fact that she had spent most of the previous week training lightsaber forms with a brother that had been born in another version of her galaxy should be more difficult to have faith in than the full glass of water by the side of her bed. 

Rey turned over onto her side staring at the glass for a moment as the hazy period between dreams and wakefulness rose and then faded into full awareness like a less brilliant but equally important sunrise. The water was still there, still half full, still dust and dirt and bug free and it was still amazing. Dimples formed in her cheeks as she smiled and she sat up and reached for it in one smooth motion refusing to feel a bit of guilt for this small half glass of water. It was only one portion really, the same she would have drunk at home, and that it came so easily here and she could so easily refill it was not something she could choose any more than she could have chosen the sands of Jakku. She would use her share and nothing more, and she would use it to make the world around her a slightly better place. 

Miracle water drank Rey swung her feet over the edge of the bed and stood up, pulling on trousers and her jacket before she pulled her hair back and away from her face. Thus far she and Anakin had mostly trained. It was easiest. She realized that eventually they were going to have to talk about more than the Force and it was, in some ways, a conversation she had been avoiding. Family, her history, her family's history, Anakin's history, and the brother that neither of them had really spoken to the other about - those things felt more complicated than scavenging from ancient Star Destroyers and as she attached the lightsaber to her belt, with the blaster her father had given her in its holster, and checked her reflection quickly in the mirror - another novel activity - she considered whether today was the day she offered to push the conversation forward. 

The few days they had spent together had brought new knowledge. Anakin would mention things about home, about the sister Rey could tell she reminded him of, and the brother that he that he missed. A best friend, Tahiri, who if Rey was reading between the lines, might have been a bit more than a best friend - a novel concept that she was only just begin to understand the appeal of - and things about the Han and Leia and _Falcon_ he had known. He would throw little bits and pieces of what the galaxy he had grown up in was like, and sometimes Rey would toss something back to him about the galaxy here. 

Although when it came to galaxy politics she suspected that Anakin knew more than she did and she felt painfully behind. She was grateful she had reconnected with her Father first. Even if Han hadn't been fully aware at that point, they'd felt a kinship and a connection that she suspected had come so easily because of her own interest in ships and mechanics. She'd flown the _Falcon_ easily, perhaps partially because of the Force, but also likely the hours and hours she'd spent in her hand build simulator project. Either way, Han Solo had looked at her like a daughter, even though she didn't think he'd realized - she hadn't - and the connection had been easy. If it had been her mother first, the General, with the politics and the galaxy as her interest - Rey would have had nothing. She still didn't have much. 

Which wasn't to say she hadn't connected with her mother. She had - particularly in the moments after she had returned from Starkiller base - as she'd told her mother what had happened to Han, what she had begun to remember after Kylo Ren's invasion of her mind, and her mother's confirmation of what she'd both hoped for and also feared. 

The hug they had shared in the immediate aftermath had held them together that night. Rey had not known precisely what she should do with the immediate reality of a mother that she'd never really known and had only the faintest of memories of. She'd known less what to do with a father that she'd believed she could find friendship and kinship with and would never have the chance to do. And last, she'd known least what to do with a brother who had betrayed her father, and at once she felt had very personally betrayed her. Leia had seemed lost in a swirl of emotions that Rey could almost feel at the time, which had seemed odd, until she had realized that it was likely her own Force sensitivity and what Kylo had unwittingly begun to unlock as he'd broken past walls in her mind. 

But Leia's world was politics, and had always been politics from what Rey could remember herself. And Rey's own world had been so very far removed from any of that mattering in _any_ way. The only politics that had mattered on Jakku were the politics of staying on the right side of or out of the way of those who would beat you up and take your day's scavenge for themselves. Perhaps even outside of the flying, it had been easier to connect with Han, because in its own way the Jakku world was not so unlike that of a smuggler, just more harsh, with less pay likely at the end of the day. 

As she left her room, Rey realized that what she possibly needed before she really spoke with Anakin about the family things - and about Kylo - the shadow that she could feel hanging in the room between them - she might need a different perspective, and it occurred to her that she knew precisely who she wanted to speak with. 

Rey finally found the young Kadel Ko Connix just outside the mess hall. Kaydel Ko had played with Rey and Ben when they were children, and her Alderaanian born parents had maintained a closeness with Leia - perhaps because of their shared losses - long after Rey had been kidnapped and stolen away from her mother. More recently Kaydel Ko and her brother, Anakin, seemed to have developed a close friendship and Rey was rather hoping she might find some questions answered. 

"Kaydel Ko? Do you have a moment?" 

"Yeah, sure. I was just headed to the control room but we can walk together if you want." 

Rey didn't know where to start on her questions. Growing up on Jakku had provided her with scavenging skills, bargaining skills, and fighting skills, and she'd managed to find the piloting skills on her own. But trusting and working with others in any sort of long-term way? That hadn't been a useful jakku skill set, and Rey had been given precious little practice along those lines. And those times when she had done so it hadn't always worked out exactly well. Perhaps Finn was the first time in her life where she'd reached out a hand to someone, and found him, well… sturdy enough. Not ready to dump her and run at the first sign of trouble. Willing to consider her worth coming back for. 

Given time, she suspected that Han Solo - no, her _father_ \- would have been found that steady as well. Whatever Kylo Ren might have said, or whatever he believed. 

But Rey had learned long ago there was nothing to fix a lack of skill set, except to move forward, make the mistakes that would inevitably be made, and pick up on the other side of them a little bit stronger, and that was something that she could do. Kaydel Ko wasn't going to run at the first sign of something awkward from Rey - they had been friends once before. And anyway, how it could be awkward to start with a fragment of a memory of friends they had once been and maybe could still be again? 

"I had this memory of you and me and Ben and some diplomatic event the other day." Rey tried to pull the details from her mind. "And I don't really know what the event was, but I remember the three of us, and Ben was kind of herding us around, trying to keep us out of trouble, and we hid from him behind a giant ch'hala tree, and then as I remember it we just stayed there. And everyone thought we'd been lost? Am I making this up?" 

Kaydel Ko's eyes lit up and she laughed. "You almost fell asleep we stayed so long! I remember this! When they found us, my parents gave me the worst talking to because I was older, and I should have known better than to run off. We had the palace _security_ looking for us." 

"Like this burly rodian security guard found us, wasn't it?" Rey questioned, poking at the details of the memory, but she had this face in her head, aqua green with a darker fringe, and the uniform, and a pout that was somewhat perpetual with rodians, but that pout had been particularly intent that night as he'd managed to spot one of them on the other side of the giant planter and he'd come around, his round dark eyes staring at them with an intensity that had honestly frightened Rey at the time. 

"Yes, that's right, I'd forgotten he was!" Kaydel Ko looked embarrassed. "And I think he was the most… er… _Rodian_ smelling rodian that I've ever encountered."

"Oh. Oh, I said that I didn't I?" Rey now was laughing. "I think I remember that, and mother scolded me for it after. Something about it being a natural smell for rodians even if it wasn't so pleasant for us, and that we needed to be kind and tolerant. Mostly I was just hoping she'd let me put rose water on my skin before I went to bed!" 

Kaydel Ko laughed. "I don't remember that, but if you did, I think it was likely well called." 

Rey chuckled and shook her head, feeling more at ease than she had a few moments before. It was nice to have the memories, faint as some of them had been, but some were coming back more clearly when she dug, and Luke had helped her with that. It was like a wall had been broken down, and she was still sifting through the rubble to find what had been covered by the debris on the other side; it was there though, and she was finding it. "It's nice to be able to remember. At least, some of it," she sighed. 

She felt Kaydel Ko's hand gently on her shoulder. "How are you doing? It has to be so strange suddenly remembering all of these things and knowing that you have family you didn't know you had." 

"It is," Rey was quiet for a moment. "But I waited for so long for my family to come to me, it isn't a bad strange. I guess I didn't realize that I would need to go to them." 

Or that her family wouldn't look quite how she remembered it. 

It should have been expected perhaps as a natural outcome of the reality that many years had passed since she had been dropped on Jakku by the bounty hunter, her memories altered in the Force, and her knowledge of where she had come from revised, but she hadn't expected that it would have changed things so much. And now there was a brother she didn't know…Which was the other reason she'd sought out Kaydel Ko.

"You've talked to Anakin quite a bit haven't you?" She glanced over at Kaydel Ko. 

"Your brother? Well, I mean, not really your brother, I guess," Kaydel Ko seemed to reevaluate her line of words, and she stopped, took a breath and nodded. "Yeah, I've spoken with him several times. Why?" 

"Poe told me a bit about him finding him. Poe's story, and his theory about Anakin.." 

"It sounds unbelievable doesn't it?" Kaydel Ko asked. "I'm sure that your mother and the other higher-ups have thought about this even more than I have, but I think there's this weird realization that his story is _too_ crazy to be anything other than true. And it's not as if a multiverse theory hasn't been a major scientific theory for a really long time, there's just not been any actual proof ever." 

Rey tilted her head. "You've read about multiverse theories?" 

"Well, I have now," Kaydel Ko admitted, a blush tinting her cheeks. "While Anakin was away on his mission I did some reading. Rather a lot of reading I guess. As odd as it seems, there have been suggestions that it could be for a long time, just never any real proof. Several experiments that have suggested… but not proven. A lot of it flew over my head, but what I could make sense of, it seemed to suggest it was possible."

"Is Anakin the proof?" Rey's brow furrowed together. 

"I don't know," Kaydel Ko said, as she stopped just outside the control room door. "Maybe. Unless he is just crazy, or telling us a lie, but I don't believe that." 

"I don't either," Rey stopped as well and the two women stood outside the control room door. "I don't know him very well yet. We've fought together some, and spent some time together, with the holostories and things, and he looks so much like Han - _Dad_ \- that it's easy to believe he is who he says he is, but it's also weird to think about because I have no memories of him, and I couldn't have. Chewie believes him though." 

"I feel like Chewbacca might be a tough sell for belief," Kaydel Ko replied. 

"He's softer than he lets on," Rey grinned. "But yeah, no, I mean, he doesn't just jump into things usually. That was Dad's job, I think, and Chewie followed."

For a second the two women were quiet. Rey had originally been going to ask additional questions about Anakin - about who he was, and what he'd been like - but she realized that maybe this had been the most important one. Did Kaydel Ko, who had spent as much time with him as Rey had, and for longer - since the beginning of his arrival here - believe the story that he was telling them all? And if she did, which it seemed she did, then maybe the other questions Rey had could be directed specifically to her brother.

"Do you have time to do lunch later?" Kaydel Ko broke the silence. 

The question made Rey realize that she'd managed the conversation without completely failing and turning Kaydel Ko off to future ones and with that realization a smile crept onto her face. "Yeah, I think so. In fact, it sounds like fun." 

She found Finn as she returned towards the mess hall. A smile crossed his face, bright and authentic as he walked up to her. 

"I came to get you, cause that brother you've got from that other galaxy seemed to think it'd be good to have breakfast together and I figured you'd want to come too." 

"You figured I'd want to come too?" Rey gave Finn a quizzical look. 

Yes, she had been glad to see Finn and Anakin getting along. Anakin was family, and Finn was her closest friend. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, they had not just gotten along, once introduced, but they had become good friends on their own terms and while as annoying as Finn could be - and Rey could come up with multiple ways he was pretty annoying - he _was_ enthusiastic about learning things that he'd not been able to previously and Anakin had seemed glad to help out. 

"Not with just me," Finn shook his head adamantly. "With both of us, cause I said I'd go find you."

"Why do you need me there?" 

"Cause, he wants to know more about the First Order, and how we found your dad and what happened with Kylo Ren, and I can tell him the first part, and I can tell him the latter part, but I figured you'd know the latter stuff even better than I do. Plus I don't know any of the stuff that happened after you were captured by Ren."

"He wants to know about that?" Rey slowed her steps just enough that Finn had to adjust his own gait to not shoot forward without her. 

"Yeah, I think so." Finn looked over at her carefully and then he frowned. "This isn't going to be one of those things where you don't want to talk, is it?" 

"If I don't want to talk about being bullied and tortured by my own brother, then I think that's very fair," Rey shot back at him. But this had been what she had been planning on finding Anakin to talk to him about. So why was she suddenly dragging her feet? "But no, it's just more that, he hasn't ever really asked about it at all. Why did he ask you first?" 

"Well, cause as a former stormtrooper I happen to know plenty about the First Order," Finn returned. "Plus, I mean, I was on Starkiller. I helped come up with the plan to rescue you." 

"Which, was lovely, but completely unnecessary, and then I had to rescue you." 

"Technically, Chewbacca rescued both of us," Finn returned, good natured despite her push back. "If he hadn't we'd all be exploded star-dust." 

"You're deflecting."

"And you're trying to steal all my thunder 'Miss I Persuaded the Stormtrooper to Let Me Go like a Jedi Master of Old'." 

"It was really impressive," Rey gave him a wide-eyed look, and shrugged lightly. "You should have been there." 

"Yeah, well I was trying, but everyone here was all like, 'rescue a girl, or stop the base from exploding us?', I had to convince them those two things weren't at odds with each other before they would give me the X-wing squadron for the rescue attempt."

"And you did a solid job of it. Thank you," Rey offered him a quick grin as they turned the corner into the mess hall. She saw Anakin sitting in the corner and waved to him. "Get me some of the eggs, and also the juice? Thanks Finn." 

"Hey, you know, he asked to talk to me first. Hey-!" 

Rey could hear a series of slightly colorful language coming out of Finn's mouth as she headed across the room towards her brother. It was the sort of tease that she knew Finn wouldn't mind, especially considering he'd taken to bringing her an extra juice every day anyway. This morning she'd just take him up on the seeming desire to bring her juice, and let him bring her breakfast, too.

"Morning," Anakin looked up at her with a lopsided grin that looked so much like their Dad's Rey had to swallow back a longing for him to be here as she returned the greeting and sat down across from Anakin. It felt strange to miss a man she only vaguely remembered, and whom she had only met so briefly. It was just another reminder that the last time the four Solos had been a family had been when Rey had been no older than six. 

She'd never know whether Kylo had any real reason to consider Han a bad father or not. Certainly she'd not had any experience to back his claims up. If anything Han had been abundantly generous to a girl that he didn't know. And perhaps he had suspected. But Rey was more certain that this was just wishful thinking on her part, and that in reality she had just reminded him of what his daughter might have looked like had she grown up. And when they had found the easy bonding over flying, over the _Falcon_ which she well knew had always been a hugely important part of his life, she suspected that he'd seen a chance to have a child again. 

Then again, Rey would rather just pretend the former than be certain of the latter. She hated the thought that her Father hadn't known that he'd found her before he'd died. 

She glanced up from her train of thought to see Anakin looking at her intently. His eyes were blue, so much lighter than Han's, more like their Uncle's, but they had a similar intensity in the gaze. 

"Finn sort of pulled you into this out of the blue didn't he?" 

"Are you pulling that from my thoughts?" Rey countered, narrowing her own gaze at him. 

"No," Anakin shook his head. "It's just - the way you looked at me when you sat down, and also you haven't really said anything for the last couple of minutes, and also you don't have food." 

"Well, I figured if he was going to give me a conversation this heavy without much warning," Rey shrugged, and reached across with an easy grin to grab a piece of dried fruit off of Anakin's tray. "Then the least he could do is bring me a tray of food. That actually goes for you too. You could have said something yesterday during training."

"Yeah, I know," Anakin had the decency to look a little guilty. "I just wasn't certain it was time yet, but last night when I was working in the gym, I realized it was, and that it should be you and Finn both, probably, although I wasn't planning on both of you at the same time necessarily. That's on Finn's shoulders."

"What's on my shoulders?" Finn asked as he balanced two trays down to the table. 

Rey offered him a quick grin, and as he sat down she gave him a beat and then punched his arm. "You not giving me any warning." 

"I gave you warning. About as much as he gave me anyway." 

"That's… not an unreasonable criticism," Anakin brought a piece of bread up to hold between his two hands, while he quietly tore off little pieces and started to eat them. "Sorry, and if you don't want to do it today…"

"No, it's okay," Rey assured him as she reached for a fork and knife. "Truth be told, it was on my mind this morning too. I think that means it's time."

"Yeah," Anakin shuffled his feet under the table displaying an unwillingness that told Rey she wasn't alone in being uncertain about having these conversations. "I guess, I have a difficult time getting details from mom. I've read as much as I can on the official bits of the First Order, but Kylo Ren? What happened with Dad? I can't read those things off the holonet." 

Rey looked over at Finn and realized that he was looking at her and she realized suddenly why he'd brought her in and why she didn't mind.

They had both been there. 

While she hadn't understood quite the significance of all of it until later, they had both been there, hoping for something to happen that shone a light into a dark space, rather than the opposite. And she realized something that Finn was maybe picking up on, which was that she wasn't okay about Ben. Even after her conversations with her Uncle, she was having a tremendously difficult time not getting angry at him for what he'd taken from her - the possibilities that she'd wanted so desperately to have. 

Almost without thinking she reached out to grab Finn's hand, and then upon having done so and thinking about it, she couldn't help but think that it was ridiculous that she'd done so. She could run through Jakku escaping from thugs without his hand, why on earth would she need it now? But she didn't _need_ it, maybe, she wanted it. And maybe that was okay. 

Anakin was looking between them, his face serious, and he hadn't eaten anything since he started talking to them. "We have to move forward somehow, against the First Order, figuring out how to deal with Kylo Ren -" he stopped, hesitated, and frowned slightly as if he were going to self-correct, but then he didn't. "With the leader that he follows - we have to get answers, but right now… there's still so much I don't know." 

"What do you want to know?" Finn spoke evenly, with a calmness that Rey wouldn't have normally attributed to him, but that she was grateful for at the moment. 

"What do you know about Kylo Ren? Who is he? What has he done? Or, maybe it'd be better to start with Dad, and what happened on the base that day? I don't know… or I could tell you about what happened when I had a run-in with him…" Anakin sighed and held his hands out in front of him. "I know it's not easy regardless of where we start." 

"But it's necessary," Rey nodded, suddenly a little less hungry than she had been. "All right, what I knew then and what I know now blur together. And I was - meeting him was what started to unlock all those things. He tried to push into my head, to see the map to Luke. I pushed back, and I ended up in his head." 

"Dangerous place to be," Finn said dryly, reaching for his caf cup. 

"That happened to me too," Anakin nodded. "When I was duelling him. He's obsessed with our grandfather." 

"Vader." Rey frowned. "Yeah. He's afraid he'll never be as strong as him. I didn't realize at the time that it was his grandfather..." When she looked up she realized that Anakin seemed a bit surprised. But that had been before the memories had started back, and even once they had… as a child she'd only known of Bail Organa, never of Anakin Skywalker and certainly never of Darth Vader. Vader's identity as a Skywalker, and as a relation of her mother, had come out had been long after her kidnapping. Ben hadn't taken the deception well. It had been the thing that perhaps had created the final spiral. 

"Yeah, Darth Vader," Anakin shrugged. "He was Anakin Skywalker before he became a Sith Lord, and I was named after him." 

"I didn't even known of him until I spoke with Luke. I mean, I knew of him, but not like that." Not as her grandfather. 

"I knew from really early. Mom told us. I mean, when she talked about her father, it was Bail Organa, because that's who she remembered, but we knew that her birth father had been Anakin Skywalker, from the very beginning." 

"He was never mentioned. Not even by Luke. I don't know if that was intentional on his part or not," Rey frowned. Would her Uncle have not spoken of his father at the request of her mother? While Anakin had questions, and they likely deserved answers, and Rey wanted to give them when she could, but the truth was she didn't really know many of the answers herself. Maybe she had a brother she hadn't anticipated, and with him she had someone to help her through things that she hadn't counted on. 

"Maybe," Anakin had picked up the roll again and was dissecting it as if he anticipated it turning against him at any moment. "The thing is, when I talked to mom it felt like... Like she didn't know why she would have named me after him. Sometimes being named after him stunk, but I do know that mom - _my_ mom - named me after Anakin Skywalker because she wanted to recognize the Jedi her father had been. I can find mention of him in the books and the holonets, but it's different than home. And I can't help but wonder if it didn't make a difference here." 

"Would it help if I got out a pad to list out differences between this universe and that one?" Finn asked, taking a bite of the eggs in front of him as soon as he did so.

"I don't think that's really -" Rey started, and then she stopped. Maybe it was more important than she was giving it credit for being. "You knew," she looked up at Anakin. "From when? When did you first know?" 

"Um, I always knew I was named after my grandfather, Anakin Skywalker," Anakin looked down as if considering. "That was, I mean, from the time I was very small. I was maybe two or three, when it was first mentioned that my grandfather had made mistakes and had done some not very nice things? And four or five probably when I learned about Vader and my grandfather being one and the same. I had nightmares after that. Well… I still have nightmares sometimes, but mostly - I think - I've made peace with it." 

"So your mom had made peace with it too." 

This comment came from Finn and Rey glanced over at Anakin as Finn said it. Anakin had a funny look on his face but he finally nodded. 

"My mom had known for six years before Jacen and Jaina were born. And seven and a half or so before I was. She'd battled a clone of the Emperor, and watched Uncle Luke get tempted by the Dark Side, and I guess, I don't know - she figured that naming me Anakin was a way to sort of restate her faith in the light side and the Jedi? Ben is older than Jaina and Jacen would be, best I can figure it." 

"Yeah, he was born a few years after Endor," Rey confirmed. "And then I was quite a bit after that. I don't know if Mom and Dad were planning to have any other children or not. But I arrived, so they kept me." 

"Can't blame them for that," Finn teased her with a smile that she couldn't help but match. 

Anakin was sitting quietly with the bread still in his hands,and she let Finn's tease slide off into silence, her eyes on her brother. She could almost feel the uncertainty pouring off at him, and so she put down her cup of caf and reached her hand out. "Hey? What?" 

"I don't think mom has made peace with it. I mean, here. General Leia. Or if she has... " he didn't meet Rey's eyes as he looked up, instead choosing to stare at a table of pilots a few tables away. "I might be wrong; it's just a suspicion I have." 

"I'm not sure I know what it means to make peace with it." Rey admitted. "I didn't even want to take the lightsaber at first." 

Finn lifted a cup of caf to his lips. "Yeah, well, sometimes going out and being some sort of fancy fighter? Not really your first priority." 

"The thing is," Anakin said softly, but with an intensity that pulled both Finn and Rey's attention fully to him. "Being a Jedi, it's not just the fighting. Maybe it's not even primarily that. I used to think it was, because I used to think that was the only way you could help people, but recently I've realized sometimes it's a lot harder to do the not-fighting thing. Or I think it would be. I haven't had a lot of opportunities to make a difference in a way that isn't fighting, but I've had a few times where… fighting made it worse and to change the galaxy in small and almost immeasurable ways? That's everything, and Jacen wouldn't believe me saying this, but for example here: I fought Kylo Ren, not knowing who he was. I could have killed him - thankfully, I didn't." 

Rey could almost feel Finn's doubt on whether that was something to be grateful for or not. To be honest she wasn't even certain it was. "Anakin he may be my brother, but he's not a nice person." 

"I get that," Anakin's words were even-toned. "But I promised mom we'd get him back. When I think about it what it means to be a Jedi, there are two things that come to mind - help people, and keep the Force in balance. There's no balance in this galaxy, any more than there was in mine."

"What does that even mean?" Finn asked, and Rey couldn't help but be grateful that he had. Luke had spoken about it with her a couple of times, but never deeply, and she still felt as if it was a nebulous concept in her head at best. Balance was something that could be applied to physical objects, but not to a mystical energy field. How did you even apply balance to something that you couldn't see or hold? 

Anakin seemed to be struggling to answer the question as well. "When there's too much darkness, there's death. Too much light, it attracts darkness - if that makes any sense. Balance is where life flourishes, and peace, justice, all those other things we seek? They flourish too when there is balance, and death happens - but as a part of the cycle, not because things are out of balance.

"At least, I think," he sighed and ran a his hand through his hair. "To be honest, guys, I'm not sure that's one hundred percent accurate, and it feels counter-intuitive, because it feels like I should be seeking just light, but I think balance serves the light, because balance is where the light flourishes most easily without being swallowed by darkness. And as someone who knows what it's like for a galaxy to be swallowed by darkness? That's not where we want to be."

"I mean, that I can agree with, even if I'm not sure I really understand that other stuff," Finn replied easily, pushing his tray back. "But then they didn't really want us messing with things like light and dark and balance as stormtroopers." 

"I'm not sure I understand it entirely either," Rey said. "But if I'm understanding right balance is where the chaos matters the least." 

Anakin nodded at her. 

Which didn't exactly answer questions about what to do next. Things had been a lot simpler when her only real concern had been whether or not she would manage to scavenge enough for a day's portions while she was out in the wastes of Jakku. But as she glanced to the side, Finn's face set with a sort of hopeful determination that she had largely come to associate with him since her return, and the brother across from her, looking so much like the father they had each lost in different ways, she realized that she wouldn't give up this confusion for that simplicity. 

She had spent years waiting for a family, not knowing who that family was, or how complicated that family might be, yet despite that this was better. She wasn't alone: She had a friend, a brother, an Uncle and teacher, and a mother and those things mattered. 

"What about Ben?" Anakin had said that he had promised their mother that he'd bring Ben home, but that sounded crazy to Rey. Anakin hadn't been in Ben's custody. He hadn't seen just how far the brother was fallen. Ben had reached out, maybe simply sensing the Force sensitivity she had to offer? Or maybe - and this she didn't want to think about too much - there had been a connection neither of them had really recognized and one Rey had wanted to ignore. "I don't know if we can bring him home," she pointed out, with her voice sounding perhaps more harsh than she really wanted it to, so she amended it slightly. "You only fought him. You didn't spend time alone with him." 

"He's family. Grandfather was turned back from the Dark Side. I have to believe it's possible for Ben too." 

"You might be crazy," Finn pointed at Anakin then after a moment he shook his head. "But I guess, it's the sort of hopeful optimistic crazy I've somehow fallen in with these days." 

"Oh shut up, you're optimistic enough," Rey looked over at Finn. "You should come join us in the gym this morning." 

"Riiiiiight, cause getting bruised up is the first thing I want to do in the morning." 

"It'll be fun," Anakin's ice blue eyes twinkled across the table at Rey before he leaned across to Finn. "Come on, I've heard stories about how well you were trained. I'd like to see it in action." 

"You know I said he was crazy?" Finn looked over at Rey as he started standing up, but she could tell even without him saying anything that he was already planning on coming with them. "I take it back. You both are."


	3. Anakin

Anakin's feet threatened to slide out from under him on stones slippery with what he realized almost as soon as he caught himself was frozen rain. It was cold, numbing, and seemed to creep into his very bones and threaten to take up a permanent residence. 

The dark surrounded him almost completely, broken only by a dim light from a glowrod attached to his pocket on his orange jumpsuit, and a flash of lightning that would split the sky in two, leaving everything brighter than daylight for a split second before plunging the entire world back into darkness. In its departure, it was more difficult to see the cobblestones under his feet than it had been before the light. 

He was climbing a staircase built into the side of a mountain, clinging close to the incredibly tall walls of a castle. The staircase was impossibly long, so long that when he looked behind him Anakin could no longer see the place where the ship had been left. He could see only stairs, in the flash of lightning those stairs felt even more dangerous than they had when he was climbing them. There was waving brush along the sides of the staircase, but it was narrow, twisted, slick, and as Anakin looked up it, he couldn't see the top in the darkness and the horrible weather. 

He felt keenly the need to keep going, they had to reach the top, and the aches in his calves told him that he had been climbing upwards a long time, that going down seemed equally problematic as simply continuing to climb one step after anxious additional step towards the top. The tower had to end eventually, the rain might lessen after a while, if he could just keep pushing through it - he could keep going. It was important that he keep going. 

Lighting flashed brilliant against the dark sky of the planet and illuminated the tower above Anakin. He blinked and made to move down, but as he did so a shadow above him caught his eye, and he found himself staring into the same location even after the lightning had faded back into angry charcoal clouds and dark sky. But there had been something there - something he should have recognized - a ship… a person… the identity was illusive, but the feel of it being family was more solid than the icy cobblestone underneath Anakin's foot. 

Perhaps it had been only a shadow, merely a ghost, but ghosts seemed important right now in ways that they had not been important to Anakin since he was a boy on Dagobah trying to come to terms with the legacy that he had to fold into his destiny. And as he turned back around, there was the flash of blonde hair, an orange jumpsuit, and his hand came up automatically to the wall as he was startled to see the green eyes of Tahiri Veila staring into his. 

"About time." 

"Tahiri?" And it occurred to him, a slow weight across his chest as the answer to his question set in: "I'm dreaming." 

"Yeah, you might be," she didn't seem to be bothered by the rain, in fact it almost seemed as if it had stopped as he turned to talk to her. 

He glanced down at the clothes he was wearing, boots, an orange jumpsuit, no lightsaber, it was like he was back at the academy, but as he held his hand up to look at it, it looked like his own hand - normal, grown-up, reasonably adult. His eyebrows pulled together as he raised his gaze back up to Tahiri. "What's going on? Why are you here?" 

"Do you know where here is?" 

"Bast Castle. My grandfather's fortress," Anakin knew the identity of the location as soon as she had asked, and he lifted his face against the lightning and rain once again. The dark spires next to them still seemed to disappear into mist. He turned back to his best friend and without thought dropped his gaze to her feet. They were barefoot, even in his vision, and he could not help but think that they did not look nearly as angry as they should for being held against frozen stones. He couldn't help it. He smiled. "You're not wearing shoes." 

"You thought I would be?" Tahiri threw back airily. "Have you figured out why you're here yet?"

Anakin looked up at the spires again. Here was a dream or maybe a Force vision. It was sometimes difficult to tell the difference between them, but he was self-aware enough now to know that one of those things likely held true. Short of him having been dreaming and somehow landed back in his own galaxy, on a surprise trip to Vjun and Bast Castle, there was no other explanation for Tahiri's presence here. Was it really her somehow across universes? Or was she a representative stand in for his own consciousness? And did it matter which? That was a question for after, perhaps.

Lightning spiked across the sky, a deep rumble echoing across the stones and spires around them, and Anakin shivered, but not from the rain or the icy cold. Something else felt wrong - dark. 

"My grandfather has been on my mind a lot recently," Anakin offered to Tahiri, but he could tell from Tahiri's look it wasn't the reason she was looking for. 

"Come on," she told him, grabbing his hand with a warmth that felt almost as if it couldn't be a dream or a vision it had to be real. 

_It couldn't be real._

The remaining climb had felt insurmountable merely moments before, but somehow they traversed what had felt like a climb into the clouds in a matter of moments. As they reached the top, Tahiri's hand dropped from his as they came to stand in front of his grandfather's fortress. The door hung open - not like it had when they had visited as kids despite the orange jumpsuits they each wore. As Anakin looked to his side to see Tahiri, he realized that she was by the doors already, motioning him in, and after only a moment's hesitation he followed her into the entrance. 

It felt larger than he had remembered, the fortress itself suggesting a labyrinth that he couldn't remember being a part of his grandfather's citadel. 

"Tahiri," he reached for her hand again, but it didn't quite seem to hold even though she turned back to face him. 

"I can't stay," she said apologetically. "And I can't go with you this time" 

"Here? Why here?" 

"It's a piece of the past. It's a piece that has been cleared at home, but it still is calling you in this world. Becoming is a continuous work, Anakin Solo." 

"Becoming what?" 

"Becoming Anakin Solo. Becoming Tahiri Veila. Becoming ourselves is a lifelong work for all of us." 

"Are you real?" The words pushed between his lips with a tremor that he wanted to ignore. "Is it really you?" 

"Does it matter?" Tahiri raised an eyebrow at him. "You're asking as many questions as your brother, Anakin." 

"Yeah, well, maybe I finally understand why Jacen might want to ask questions," Anakin murmured. If there was a labyrinth here, it was fading away as he stared into her green eyes with a pang of loss that he hadn't really allowed himself to fade. It had been obvious, with his parents, obvious with Jacen and Jaina, and he'd pretended, maybe, that he could easily transition into this new world, but suddenly he wanted nothing more than to tug her hand, pulling her down onto the floor and sitting cross-legged facing each other, knee to knee, hands clasped as he told her all of the things he hadn't yet whispered to anyone. 

"Why are you here? Is this about my brother? The other one? The one here?" He moistened his lips and pushed his hand up through his hair. "Tahiri, I have no idea what to do. He's turned to the Dark Side and I don't know how to bring him back, or even if I can. I'm not his family, exactly. It's not like if it were stars forbid, Jacen or Jaina, but i need to do something. I just want to tell you my ideas, my theories, to have you poke holes in them and laugh when I've gotten something stupid, and chase some random idea of mine down a hole until you come back with a full-fledged plan. I miss you." 

For a moment Tahiri didn't say anything and Anakin wondered if he were really just talking to himself. Not exactly himself, but this sort of projection of what he wanted to hear from Tahiri. Certainly it felt as if she weren't talking enough to really be Tahiri. The barefoot thing felt like her, but it could also be memories. 

"You told me you would come back." 

Her words were casual and cool and they bounced around the chamber as she stood there watching him, her eyes had shifted and a sad smile pulled up her lips. 

The implications of what she was saying twisted his heart and suddenly it didn't matter whether it was real or not. He reached out to grab her hand. "I was going to." 

"But you didn't."

There was a long silence between them broken only by the rush of wind or rain from somewhere, the sound of a storm blowing past them and away into the distance. 

"You'll be fine," Anakin felt as if he couldn't quite trust his voice. "You're strong Tahiri. You're amazingly strong. You'll be fine without me. You've got Jacen. You've got Jaina. You've got you, and everything that you are and you're a Jedi. You'll be fine," he reached out to put his hands on her shoulders, relieved that they actually held firmly against warmth and skin, and not much like a dream after all. 

"I miss you." 

"I know. I miss you too." 

"When we were here before," Tahiri switched his attention from her back to the room. "We were looking for Obi-Wan Kenobi's lightsaber. It's here still. It was never taken away. But you carry that with you, Anakin. That's not why you're here. You're not here because you've been thinking of your grandfather. You're here because of your grandfather. Because he's still lingering here. Because it's a past you all need to confront. Do you understand?" 

Anakin swallowed, and stared blankly for a moment. 

"Anakin, for stars sake, _keep_ up!" 

A short laugh exploded from his chest despite himself. The words were so classically Tahiri, and he had missed her so much. 

"Because Grandfather was saved." 

"Mmmm, there's more than that. For your brother particularly. But this is your journey, and you need to go." 

The room felt darker all of a sudden, the presence he'd felt earlier seemed to once again be in the room with them, and when he looked back at Tahiri she seemed to be further away. 

"Tahiri wait!" 

"I can't stay, Anakin." 

"But you never kissed me good-bye! I never told you -" 

"I already know," the words felt more like soft breeze whispering in his ears than spoken substantially aloud. "But it's time. Wake up, Anakin. Wake up." 

He did. 

Staring into the darkness with the low whir of machinery and the constancy of air circulation on the base, Anakin's breath felt shallow, his heart beating fast, and a sense of urgency threatening to rattle him. He closed his eyes, running through several calming exercises, but even as he did they brought him the remembrance of learning them side by side with Tahiri, her giggle and chatter as Tionne had explained something particularly complicated… 

He pushed himself up onto one elbow and rolled over so that his face was looking down onto the floor where it was slightly illuminated by a running light that was turned on low. 

It made no sense for that to have been Tahiri. It had to have been his own subconscious as her, telling him what he was afraid to believe, the opportunity to say good-bye to his best friend and could have been… to see her once again even if it was only in those dreams. His eyes closed and he stared, unmoving, for what felt like much longer than it probably was. When he finally opened them again, and reached for the chrono, he took in the early morning hour with the recognition that he was unlikely to sleep again tonight. 

He crawled out of the bed, pulled on his trousers and belt, attached his lightsaber to the belt, and reached for the ivory shirt, and instead of his Jedi tunic, he reached for the jacket to ward off the chill in the late night air. 

Anakin left his room not entirely certain about where he was going to go. The bay would probably have mechanics that would have things he could work on and normally just having something to tinker with might have pulled his mood up, but the dream was still vivid in his imagination. Tahiri, the location itself, the conversation about his grandfather, her words: becoming is a continuous work. For him, for Rey, for Ben… and if becoming was a continuous work, then you could become something different? Was that the point? 

When he thought about it he knew that his grandfather had been pulled back from the Dark Side at the end, but Anakin Skywalker had never been required to live with those mistakes or to repair the things he'd broken. His body had been broken at the end, and he'd died, having saved his son - and probably having ultimately assisted the rebellion more than he would ever know. 

Ben. 

Kylo Ren. 

Whatever his name, he might still be becoming, just like Anakin, but even if he chose to become something different - what would that look like? Anakin had no map for that. 

The control room was relatively quiet, but as he stepped inside, he saw both Winter, whom he game a quick nod to, and another newly familiar head of dark curls. And that felt rather very much like the Force at work. 

"You unlucky enough to pull the night shift?" He stepped up beside Zayna Ardellian, the slicer, and tentatively offered her a greeting in the way of a joke. 

When she looked up, her lips turned up in a smirk. "Maybe I'm a night bird," she suggested, a nod at the stool next to her telling him he was free to join her. "But I'd have thought you Jedi have specific hours you keep." 

"Not really no," Anakin chuckled. "I mean, when I was a student maybe, but mostly no. You sleep when you can." 

"And tonight you can't?" 

Anakin nodded. "Yeah, tonight I can't. And actually, I have a question for you. Or I need some help." 

"Why do I suddenly feel like I'm likely to be pulled down a ventilation shaft again?" 

"It's not that bad," Anakin couldn't help the lopsided grin. "I swear, it's pretty easy, right up your skill set, you can probably even do it at this hour of the morning. Unless maybe you're on the end of a twelve hour shift. You aren't, right?" 

"I just came on an hour ago," Zayna shook her head at him. "All right, what's up Solo?" 

"Vjun." 

"Vjun?" 

"It's a planet, in a system of the same name. Outer rim territories? Nuiri sector?"

"Nuiri," Zayna had already pulled up a map. "All right, so here it is, and yeah it's there, but I'm guessing that's not the part you need, cause you're a good enough pilot that you could have figured that out galactic maps on your own." 

"Thanks," Anakin smiled. 

"Don't get a big head," Zayna shook her head. "I'm just saying this you could do, so it couldn't have been this easy." 

"No, it's not," Anakin stared at the system. "I need to know if there's any evidence anywhere, of an Imperial stronghold on the planet, particularly anything that might have been connected with Darth Vader." 

"Darth Vader?" There was a pause, a couple of keystrokes, and then she added, her eyes intent on the screen. "Your grandfather." 

Anakin's smile faded slightly. "Yeah, my grandfather, when he was an Imperial and a Sith Lord. I'm going to guess the records of whatever exists there are probably encrypted. Or were. Technically I haven't done a search yet, but-"

"All right, I got your drift," Zayna nodded and her fingers were flying over keys, and Anakin settled in to watch her for a moment. 

He wasn't surprised that he'd come up with Vjun in his visions. He'd been just a boy when the Jedi Master Tionne had showed up at the Academy on Yavin IV and told them all that she'd heard someone say that she'd found information that suggested that Obi-Wan Kenobi's lightsaber was in the fortress on Vjun, and at that point his Uncle Luke had been to Vjun before, and to the castle. He and Tahiri, Master Tionne, their friend Uldir Lochett, and the Jedi Master Ikrit had made the journey to the fortress and had ultimately found Kenobi's lightsaber. 

There had been a number of things that had been a part of that journey, but one of the things Anakin remembered the most clearly, was discovering evidence of his Grandfather's interest and concern in his family - particularly Anakin's Uncle. It had been one of those things that had proven to offer him greater understanding of the Grandfather he'd never know and Anakin had been grateful for that. 

It was an understanding that felt relevant now. When he had fought with Kylo Ren - Ben - on Raxus Prime, his brother had seemed to believe he was following in his Grandfather's footsteps - fulfilling his legacy - but Anakin knew that Anakin Skywalker's legacy wasn't what Kylo Ren believed that it was. Anakin Skywalker had cared deeply about his family for all of his other flaws, and that was an understanding that Anakin Solo knew with his whole heart. He knew it perhaps because it was undeniably part of him as well. While others might look at Kylo Ren and see something that had to be brought to heel, Anakin wanted to believe that it didn't have to end that way. There was an answer that might involve bringing this brother he didn't really know home to his mother. 

Maybe he was crazy, but it felt like the good kind of crazy - the type that offered possibilities. 

"There's nothing here," Zayna interrupted his thoughts and pushed herself back in her chair, staring at the display for a moment. "But this is just the unencrypted stuff, there might be stuff in the files. What are you looking for exactly? Is this a Jedi thing?" 

"Why is everything always a 'Jedi thing' with you?" Anakin threw back at her, his eyes narrowing slightly. "It doesn't have to be, maybe it's a family thing." 

"You're asking about some obscure possible fortress in the Outer Rim on a planet that has barely any interest from the Republic and you expect me to think it's just a 'family thing'." 

"Yeah, maybe," Anakin responded with heat in his words, even though he was trying to stay calm. 

He looked at her, and she was staring at him with dark mahogany eyes that didn't look away from his protestation. They stared at each other in silence for a moment and it was Anakin who finally pulled back an exasperated breath in. "Maybe it could be both," he suggested. 

Zayna's eyes narrowed slightly. "All right." 

Anakin watched her for a moment before realizing that she was expecting him to continue his explanation and he didn't quite suppress the urge to roll his eyes as he drew his breath in with irritation. 

"When I was a kid, I went to Vjun. There was a fortress on the planet, called Bast Castle, and it was Darth Vader's. A place where he stayed and kept things. One of my Jedi Master's had heard that Obi-Wan Kenobi's lightsaber had been taken there removed from the first Death Star after his death at Darth Vader's hand, and so we went to see if we could find it."

"He was the Clone Wars general, wasn't he?" 

"Yeah, but also a Jedi," Anakin nodded. 

"Did you find the lightsaber." 

Anakin unclipped his own lightsaber and held it out. Zayna looked at it. "That's it?" 

"Not exactly," Anakin grinned. "But it's part of it, yeah. And the design influenced mine quite a bit when I went to make it." 

Zayna looked at it and after a second she reached out to wrap her hand around the hilt. 'I've never held one of these." 

"You and 99.9% of the galaxy I'd wager," Anakin raised his eyebrows with a grin. "Go ahead if you want for a minute, but I don't recommend turning it on this close to computer equipment. The Resistance won't love you if you destroy their computer panels." 

"It's heavier than I expected," she said suddenly. "It's - I mean, I think I expected laser sword, it'd be light." 

"There's a lot of mechanics in there and they're mostly metal with the exception of the crystal itself," Anakin pointed out. 

"So you found Kenobi's lightsaber then, and you built this one from that one, or inspired by it," Zayna handed the hilt back to him and looked at the display again as she asked: "So what about Vjun here. Are you needing another lightsaber?" 

"No," Anakin chuckled, but the real answer was more difficult to explain, maybe particularly so to someone who was not a Jedi. But Zayna had been in the chamber with him and Kylo Ren, which perhaps should have made it easier. He pulled his thoughts together and stared into the less than helpful display in front of them. "I had a vision tonight. Or a dream… but I think it was a vision. It wasn't entirely of a possible future, but it also wasn't entirely grounded in the past. I think there's something here - something I need to go find. Something about my grandfather maybe… I'm not sure. 

"I just know that trying to get a ship so that I can run off to the Outer Rim on what may be nothing is not going to be easy. I was hoping I could get some confirmation that something was actually there before I even bring it up." 

Zayna considered this for a moment and then Anakin could see her do a sweep of the room. Her eyes landed on a man with dark salt and peppered hair on the far side of the control panel and rested there for a moment and then she turned back to the display. "Keep an eye on Admiral Statura," she said softly. "I'm going to try something." 

Anakin raised an eyebrow at her, but he kept his attention framed on the man across the comm room even as Zayna started working. The nice thing about being a Jedi really was that keeping his attention on him didn't actively mean keeping his eyes on him, which would have felt more suspicious. Anakin had picked him out in the Force as best as he could with someone he didn't know very well. 

"What are you doing?" He asked Zayna.

"Probably better you don't know," she responded airily. "Just let me know if the Admiral heads this way."

"If you end up in the brigg because you're hacking into something you shouldn't," Anakin protested. "They're going to notice if I use a Jedi Mind Trick to get you out." 

"Ha! It won't be that bad," Zayna reassured him. "But I might get a scolding, or possibly - hmm." 

"What?" 

"Okay, so Vjun is showing up in here with additional information, although not a lot. It seems like there was documented Imperial activity there, but it was determined - at the time - to just be a fleet in the system." 

"There's nothing more?" There was a sinking feeling to Anakin's stomach as he pulled his attention from Statura over to the display. 

"Nothing that would indicate anything like what you're talking about," Zayna looked over at him apologetically. "Not that it's a confirmation it isn't there either - just…" 

"Kriff," Anakin muttered under his breath. 

It was still possible, of course. As Zayna said, it didn't rule out the possibility completely, but it certainly didn't confirm something was there. And it would have been a lot easier to convince Rey and probably his mother as well, to allow them to head off on what might be a complete waste of time, if there was the definite likelihood that they would run into something like Bast Castle. 

"What about the information we got when we were on Raxus Prime?" Anakin asked her. "Is that in here?" 

"I think so," Zayna's fingers were moving across the keys again, her eyes once more up on the display. "Oh - wait. No, they aren't." 

"No? Why?" Anakin was leaning forward, but he saw it before she could talk. "There's a First Order supply base there." 

Zayna looked over at him. "Yep. Although it doesn't look like it's a major one, more - some sort of back-up stronghold if needed?" 

"But something like Bast Castle would have been perfect for that," Anakin couldn't keep the hope out of his voice. "It's well guarded, has automatic turrets, and it was an Imperial property." 

"Okay, so assuming that this is right, and that base is still there when you get there - what are you going to do?" 

Anakin was silent as he stared at the display for a minute. It was a question that would need answering before he spoke with his mother, but it was one he was still forming the answers on himself. What he knew was that he'd dreamed about it, and this was close enough - even without Vader's name specifically attached to it - that it was something to go off on. But he didn't have his own X-wing these days and he didn't have access to his Father's ship. He was going to have to talk to Rey and try to convince her that this was important enough to try - with or without Uncle Luke's agreement. 

But then came the question of what they were after, and it was a nebulous answer, one he was sure Zayna was going to mock. 

"This is where the Jedi thing comes in," he looked over with a shrug. "And the family thing." 

"Are you hoping to find something out about your Grandfather?" 

"Maybe," Anakin sighed slightly. "I'm not really sure to be honest. Zayna, I just know this is where I need to go. I just have to figure out how to convince them of that." 

"Well you're probably going to have to come up with something more than a family reunion, or a non-reunion," Zayna pointed out, her hands dancing across the keyboard, and the display was cleared of several things, and then a few more, and then she was pulling out a small drive that she handed over to him. 

"What's this?" 

"The information on the First Order base that we got," she gave him a smirk. "I have no idea why I'm making this so easy for you Solo. I ought to make it more difficult." 

Anakin turned the drive over in his hand and then looked up at her, a lopsided grin forming on his lips. "Cause you're the best, Zayna. That's why." 

"Yeah, whatever, flattery isn't getting you anywhere. I want a full mission report when you get back." 

"That's fair. But first I have to figure out how to get on the mission." 

"You might be making it too difficult," Zayna looked over at him seriously, as her display flickered and several real-time maps came up. She ignored them in favor of looking at Anakin. "We have the knowledge from this that there was a First Order supply base there. That means they may go in to clean it out. If we send a team out there first, we figure out if it's anything useful. Also, there's what you know it was in your galaxy - something Vader was involved in. That's… I mean, it's not a sure thing, but it feels like it's at least worth sorting out. And… your brother? He seemed obsessed with Vader. If there was a First Order base of some sort that he knew was related to Vader - don't you think he'd show up there at some point, or maybe has been there? You'll learn things if you go." 

"You think I should treat it just like asking for a normal mission?" 

"I think you might be surprised, and pleasantly so." 

Anakin's eyes drifted back to Admiral Statura, a man whom he didn't recognize, but very likely had walked past before at one New Republic function or another, assuming he existed in Anakin's timeline. "I'll take it into consideration," he nodded at Zayna's advice as he stood. "And hey, thanks. I owe you one." 

"And I won't forget it," she grinned as she turned back around. "Get some sleep, Solo." 

Sunrise came all too early considering his dreaming schedule, but Anakin still managed to pull himself out of bed and into some stretches and meditation before he headed out of his room. 

Instead of the mess hall, he headed out of the base and out into the areas where the ships were parked, his sights on the Corellian light freighter at the end of the bays. In the light of day the memories of the dream he'd had last night had taken a different form than the unease and unrest of the night prior. 

Part of him had wondered if he was simply dreaming of things that he missed from home. Vjun, while it wasn't the best of memories, was one of those memories he associated most with his Grandfather. It was the place he'd learned and really understood that his grandfather had cared about his family, even if he had done a poor job of living out those feelings as a slave to the Dark Side. It was the place that Anakin had realized that the man who had saved his Uncle and turned back to the light, had likely been inside Darth Vader all of the time, but had been afraid, or unwilling to move from his comfort to become something more. Falling on the heels of Anakin's own journey to Dagobah and the understanding that he shaped his own future and destiny as it had, it had become a powerful way for him to move forward with the name that he held and to become a Jedi Knight on his own terms. 

But the appearance of Tahiri had made him question whether or not the idea that Vjun in this world might hold some key was really a valid one, or something dredged up by his subconscious to give him some sort of purpose. The truth was, although he'd had very little time to think about it in recent months, that he missed his family and his friends so badly at times that there was an ache in his chest where they should be. Tahiri had been his best friend, they'd been able to do things together that were truly incredible, and he'd left her behind and maybe he felt a little guilty about that. A little more guilty even that he was making friends here and that some of those friends were girls. 

With a sigh he reached his hand up and ran it through his hair as he stood in front of the ramp of the _Falcon_. The ramp was down, and Anakin knew that both Chewie and Rey were inside and… Finn. He was pretty certain Finn was the other presence inside the Falcon even if he was less clear from lack of knowledge and familial presence. 

Anakin hadn't asked to be brought here. Guilt for things he couldn't change and couldn't have altered was severely misplaced. As was guilt for things that he couldn't change and had tried his best to keep from happening, he reminded himself as he felt the familiarity of Chewbacca's presence on the ship. Guilt wasn't going to make anything here better, and guilt wasn't going to help solve any of the problems. Making new friends wasn't a bad thing. If the tables were reversed, he would want Tahiri to make friends, best friends even, boyfriends even, if she wanted them. And regardless, Tahiri's presence in his dream might have been no more than the fact that he was used to her sparing no punches in telling him what she thought, and also telling him when he was being stupid about something. 

And when he put it in that context suddenly it seemed obvious that the dream wasn't just his subconscious, it was the Force trying to tell him that there was something important about Vjun that he should pay attention to. He pressed his lips together, considering for a moment. If he could sell Rey on what he was saying then he'd have his ship. If he couldn't… well he'd have to try something else. For the moment though, Anakin stuffed his hands in his pockets and walked over and up the open ramp into the _Falcon_. 

"Hey? Good morning!" He called into the open ship not seeing anyone at the first despite the fact that he _knew_ he'd felt them in there.

"Anakin!" Rey's face popped up from the floor from inside one of the storage compartments. "Hey! I was just, I mean, we were just working on this subspace engine thing." 

"We?"

Finn's head popped up as well, and he gave an awkward little wave. "Rey was showing me some stuff." 

"Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt," Anakin said with a grin, but they didn't seem to be wanting him to leave unless he was completely clueless, and so he went ahead and stepped in. 

"No, it's okay," Rey's cheeks dimpled and she pushed herself up out of the storage and brought herself to her full height, still a few inches shorter than Anakin. "What's up?" 

"I had a dream last night, and I think it might have been -"

"A vision?" Finn cut in, sounding a little more excited than Anakin would have initially given him credit for being when it came to Force visions, but maybe Rey had told him a thing or two more than Anakin had expected. It actually seemed likely that the two were closer than Anakin had originally believed. 

"Yeah, maybe," he shrugged. "You have a minute?"

"Yeah, sure. Um," Rey looked over at Finn and Anakin was suddenly aware of the question of whether or not Finn should stay. 

"Oh, I mean Finn too," Anakin said. "It's mostly about Kylo Ren, and Vader, but it's not a secret exactly. I mean, I don't want the whole base to know I had a vision, but -"

"It's cool, I can keep a secret," Finn pushed himself up out of the storage place as well, but he stayed seated on the edge of it, legs dangling over into it. 

Rey crossed to the benches and slid in, wiping her hands on a rag, and she looked over at Anakin. "So something about Vader?" 

Anakin pulled a crate over, and set down on it considering, but finally he decided the easiest way was to begin was at the beginning and so he did with Rey interjecting questions every so often for clarification or better understanding. Anakin started with Tionne showing up at the Academy, with the discovery that Obi-Wan Kenobi's lightsaber might be on Vjun, the request from himself and Tahiri to go with Tionne to recover it, and then everything that they had found in the castle itself. Taking a breath he looked over at Rey. 

"Vjun was in my vision last night. Tahiri was there too, but I think Vjun is obviously the important part. I was climbing the steps, it felt like there was a dark presence there - which… I don't remember that from when I was a kid and I was there? The planet isn't friendly exactly, but I don't remember that sort of… it was the same feeling I got on Raxus Prime, actually. Like something, or someone, had their eyes on me the entire time. Creepy, and unsettling at the best." 

"Could be Snoke," Finn suggested. He'd leaned back on the floor of the _Falcon_ and he'd been listening to the conversation between Rey and Anakin without saying anything. 

"Snoke's the one at the head of the First Order, right? The Dark side Force user that was training Ben?" It still felt a little weird to use his cousin's name to refer to someone that really was his brother more than his cousin. First brother, once removed maybe. 

"Yeah, that's him," Finn looked over at Rey. "I've never met him. We didn't get that sort of clearance as Stormtroopers, you know? But I did hear about him. There were all sorts of rumors. Far as I know Ren, and also General Hux? They both had access to him. But they were both - in their own way anyway - in charge. Ren was weird though. He'd know you hadn't followed regulation and he wouldn't do shit about it." 

"The First Order is using him, and probably he's using them, in a way as well," Anakin mused. 

"How is he using them?" Rey's face wrinkled up with distaste at the notion. 

"It's just a theory, and I could be wrong. But he was really fixated on Grandfather and the legacy, that he was doing what Grandfather wanted. When I talked to Mom, she wondered something aloud: 'Is Ben punishment for never having forgiven Vader'. I don't think she really believes that - I hope she doesn't anyway - but it got me thinking, you said you didn't know when you were a kid about Vader, right? And as best I can tell the galaxy at large didn't really either. 

"What if Ben didn't find out until he was a teenager? What if suddenly he has a Grandfather he hasn't been told about, that he wants to know more? But Mom doesn't want to talk about him, and… okay Uncle Luke I feel like would have told him things, but I don't know, I wasn't there, and there are things that are different here from home - for instance it's not a big secret who my Grandfather is and never has been. So he has no information…" 

"Except Snoke," Rey bit her lip considering. "So he's using the First Order to get to more information about Grandfather?" 

"One of the things maybe?" 

"But couldn't he just ask someone here in the Resistance to look stuff up on him?" Finn frowned. "Why run off and join the First Order?" 

"Maybe whatever he found made him think that for some reason Vader was onto something. Or Snoke recognizing the interest twisted the reality to make Ben think that Vader had the right of it," Rey frowned slightly. 

"Ben's really powerful in the Force. Like you and me. That makes him a target to be corrupted, because if you can get that power on your side and control it…"

"You win the fight," Finn sighed. 

"Yeah, I mean, especially if you take out the other side's source, which they did with the students, and they pushed Uncle Luke into hiding, and they thought you were dead," he looked over at Rey. 

"You didn't see him with Dad though, Anakin," Rey's brow furrowed together. "It may have been a manipulation at first, but he killed Dad, and he did it himself without anyone manipulating him." 

Anakin didn't say anything. He hadn't been there while both Rey and Finn had been, and he could recognize the curl of anger and dislike spinning through his body at the mention of the event. He'd told his mother that he could bring Ben back, and in some way it was easier to think about doing so if he separated this galaxy's Han Solo into some other person, someone he didn't really know, not his Father… and Anakin supposed that was truth from a certain point of view, but it wasn't going to help him working with Rey and Finn, or anyone else who had been hurt by Kylo Ren in this universe. 

Finally he looked down at the toes of his boots and frowned, quiet: "The manipulation may have happened a long time ago in leading him what to believe about Vader. So he has been, but he also believes everything to be truth." 

"Isn't that kinda…" Finn stopped as both Rey and Anakin looked at him, and then he shook his head. "Look, I know manipulation and programming as well as anyone. All I'm saying is I was able to see the right thing to do, and it isn't killing innocent villagers, or murdering your father." 

Anakin's cheek twitched slightly under the directness of Finn's words. But he couldn't argue with him. Finn was right, and Kylo Ren, Ben - if there was any of Ben left there - he'd had choices and chances along the way, and he'd made choices to become who he'd become. Wasn't that the lesson Anakin had learned at Dagobah? 

"Look, I know Mom wants to believe he can be brought back, but frankly, I don't want to," Rey's mouth formed a flat line across. "He killed Dad, he tortured me, and Poe, he would have had Finn killed, and he would have stood by while a weapon the First Order created destroyed the planets his mother was on, and he had to know she was there. He had to _know_ that!" She stopped, pulled in a breath and Anakin could feel her working to focus calmly in the Force. 

The _Falcon_ carried the weight of her words. None of them spoke for a moment, on Anakin's part because he didn't know what to say. Neither Finn nor Rey were technically wrong. Ben had been given choices along the way. Anakin didn't have to know his story to know that this was true, because you always had choices. You always had ways to choose light or dark, and Ben had clearly chosen darkness in becoming Kylo Ren, and Anakin wasn't about to defend those choices, but choices were something that were constant, and that was something that Anakin had been realizing recently about himself much to his chagrin. He could choose light, but it wasn't a one time 'here we are and you're done' choice, it was a constant, daily, every moment choice to live with his face to the light and in the service of the Force in a way that he didn't always understand and sometimes kept him moving forward in nothing but pure faith that he'd figure out the right thing. 

"I think if I've learned anything from Grandfather," he said finally, drawing both Rey and Finn's attention to him. "It's that choices are continuous. And that means that you can make bad ones, follow the dark… and it makes it harder, but it doesn't make it so you can't make the right one, and start making the right ones from there on out? Because that works both ways. It's why every day I choose to be a Jedi - I _choose_ the light side." 

"You think he can still choose light?" Finn seemed skeptical. "Seems to me he's had plenty of opportunities, and giving him more of them, may just end up with all of us sitting in the wide beyond." 

Rey didn't speak, but Anakin could feel her agreement with Finn's skepticism, and eventually she leaned forward over the table. "He wanted me to join him, so he could _teach_ me. That's not going to change." 

"I think Grandfather still has lessons for us," Anakin suggested. "I think that's what the vision was telling me. I think we should go to Vjun." 

"Do we even know there's a fortress there in this galaxy?" Finn asked. 

"Yeah, there is. I already looked into that. We don't know for certain that it's Vader's, but the vision was from the force, so I'm like 99% confident that it is." 

"I told Luke I'd come back and bring you with me," Rey replied hesitantly. 

"Uncle Luke can wait for a week or so while we go out and check this out," Anakin pointed out. "If it's as important as I think it is, then we'll go back to him with more information." 

"I want to go with you," Finn said, and he did pull himself to his feet then to stare down at both of them. "I can help the Resistance here, sure, and Poe'll hate to see me go. But I'm no pilot, and they don't really need foot soldiers, and you two'll need someone who can shoot thugs off your back if it comes to that." 

A smile crossed Anakin's face as he looked up at Finn, and then back to Rey who was looking at Finn perplexed. "He may be mad." 

Anakin shrugged, his smile pulling into a full on lopsided grin. "Yeah, he'll get used to it." 

"What are we telling Mom?" 

"I don't know. It's your ship right?" 

Rey nodded, "Yeah, it's my ship." 

"Then I think I'll leave that up to you, but the truth maybe. I feel like she deserves to know." 

"I think I need more caf before I can make that decision."

"Yeah, I'm really hungry, like I could eat two of their serving rations I think." 

"And I haven't had breakfast," Anakin put in. 

Rey's voice held an edge of easy decision as she stood up: "Then we'll talk about the rest of this over food. Let's go."


	4. Ren

The weight of the blankets was too much. A strong kick flung them off, and yet left Kylo Ren freezing in the near darkness of his room on the Finalizer. His heart was racing, pounding too hard in his chest, and his mouth felt dry. His hands felt hot and sweaty and the room too small. 

Space was cold. His room on the _Finalizer_ also cold. 

He kicked the mattress once, the sensation against his skin proving to be helpful in reminding himself that he was here in the land of the living and not in the dream where his mind had just been. Sitting up in one smooth motion, he pulled his knees up, placed his elbows down, and dropped his face into his hands, hiding it between hands and hair that fell down like a curtain around it and he tried to breathe despite the press that something was wrong, and something was dangerous, and _something_...

Breathe in. 

Breathe out. 

Objective: calm the fuck down. 

It was a vision. It had pulled him from sleep and now he was sitting awake, alone in the huge non-regulation bed, practically shaking from the press of the feeling that something was going to go wrong any moment now. It made him wish for something to ground him to this moment, this space, and to life that he shouldn't want to keep as badly as he did. He was more than this, more even when he gave himself into the Force, and these desires for something tangible were weak. 

It didn't take many moments before Kylo came to the conclusion that calming down was more difficult to do than not, so he gave himself a new objective: analyse the dream.

There had been a planet, not one that Kylo Ren was familiar with specifically, although there had been a familiar sense about it. Rainy and nasty, and riddled across the surface with storms and lightning, it didn't feel like the sort of place you wanted to take a vacation, or spend a great deal of time, even if the temperament of the planet seemed to match Kylo's own temperament rather well tonight. There had been a fortress made out of dark stone, and it had been where Kylo had been headed, and he'd wandered through a maze of passageways until he'd found himself face to face with the other one. The 'brother' he wanted to forget that he had run into, but who now seemed set to haunt his dreams. 

Breathe in. 

Breathe out. 

He pressed his index finger to his wrist for a moment, tapping it, focusing on that moment while the white noise of the _Finalizer_ running was the only distraction. It pulled him in, centered him, but it did not calm him. The _Finalizer_ was disrupted with the sound of his own voice, a raw scream of frustration that was easier to deal with than the shaking feeling of dread that he didn't seem to be able to throw off no matter how many breaths he took, or how much he focused on something other than the feel of his heart racing or the clammy sense of his skin. 

He punched a hand into the mattress beside him, hard, and then he swung his feet over the edge of the bed, pulling on his black robe over the dark trousers he was still wearing. His feet were pushed into boots, and the mask was slipped on. With it over his face he at least knew that nobody else would be able to see the cracks that were threatening to widen and that knowledge itself buoyed him up as he straightened his shoulders and left his rooms. 

A ship running on Imperial time meant that it kept certain shifts regardless, and this was the 'night' shift, although while traveling at lightspeed in the middle of space, there was no 'night' as such. But it was when many of the officers slept, or tried to, and Kylo knew that the officer whose door he was headed to would be in his quarters during this hour. 

The door was locked, but that was nothing against the Force. Kylo reached out and visualized the mechanism in his brain, looking for and muting the alarms that would sound at break-in, and sliding the door open. 

The room beyond was the same in shape and size at Kylo's own quarters, but it could not be more different in the way that it was kept. While Kylo had chosen to keep his rooms sparse with the exception of a bed that was larger than regulation and a small desk and chair in the outer room, this room was fitted with a military simplicity, but with the expectation that sometime in the near future it would belong to someone of higher rank. There were chairs that spoke of some comfort, a small table, and currently a violet running light ran around the edge of the room giving it a gentle glow despite the fact that its occupant was currently sleeping. 

Or actually he wasn't.

Kylo became aware of that as he stepped forward into the bedroom and the need required to focus on whether or not the occupant would shoot the blaster that he was currently pointing at him, was a blessed release from the less controllable anxieties of his own mind. The blaster was lowered with a frustrated sigh as Kylo cleared the door, and there was a resigned irritation in the presence of the man on the bed. 

" _Ren_. What the fuck are you doing lurking around my quarters in the dark? Who let you in? I have a lock." 

Kylo shook his head, reaching up to remove the mask and place it on the small table by the door. "It malfunctioned," he said dryly. 

"Code for you used the Force to violate my privacy and ignore barriers to keep you out, what else is new," Hux spat out, but exhaustion undergird the words. "You woke me up," he added accusatory. 

"No I didn't," Kylo responded, staring at the other man with keen eyes. "You were awake when I came in." 

"What, you _checked_ that before you broke and entered?" 

He hadn't. It wouldn't have mattered, but Kylo shrugged as if he maybe had. 

Hux sighed, ran a hand up through his hair and there was a weary expression on his face as he reviewed Ren. "What do you want?" 

Kylo's cheek twitched at the question, which felt like an invasion worse than what he'd just committed to Hux. Instead of responding he kicked off his shoes. One of them thudded against the end of Hux's bedframe and caused the normally controlled general to let out a sigh of exasperation. 

"I did not invite you to stay. Get out!" 

"You're not sleeping," Kylo pointed out. "Neither am I. Why should I leave?" 

There was an acknowledgement, or at least the acknowledgement of not acknowledging, that in the aftermath of Starkiller base some calm could be pulled from Hux's presence. The man had saved Kylo's life and yes, he had done it only on Snoke's orders, but in the healing period after, Kylo could feel that Hux felt as if he had failed Snoke, and Kylo had known similarly. And for once, exhausted, and more bared in front of the General than he'd been his entire time with the First Order or with Snoke, Kylo had simply not had the energy to care, curling up on himself and directing his energies towards trying to heal himself and not think about the upcoming chastisement from Snoke. 

And to his credit, Hux had stayed. He had grumped and mumbled sarcastic jabs the entire time, but he had fixed wounds where Kylo would let him, and yell at him when he wouldn't, and perhaps Kylo would have been surprised when he kissed Hux, except that by that point it felt almost inevitable. 

Hux's shoulders sank almost imperceptibly, but Kylo could feel the resignation from the other man. "If you want a middle of the night fuck, pick up your commlink and tell me to come to your quarters." 

"You wouldn't come," Kylo pointed out, pulling the robe he had thrown over bare shoulders off of them and dropping it on the floor. 

"You don't know that," Hux's tone seemed even more grumbling as he glared at the robe. 

"Yes I do. Besides, I don't want that." 

"Then why the fuck _are_ you here, Ren? You still haven't answered that." 

Kylo wasn't about to answer that question on the basis that whatever answer he gave would probably not live up to Hux's expectation. Plus, he wasn't even certain that he could answer it. He wanted to be yelled at, maybe. The words Hux threw at him could be anticipated, the interaction familiar in its own way, and that left him steady and focused him into the moment.. But that was only part of the whole, it wasn't inclusive by a long shot. Hux hadn't shot at him, and despite his demands to leave, Kylo didn't sense that Hux really wanted him to, so he wasn't going to. Instead he kicked off the other shoe and climbed into the bed and dropped onto the pillow beside Hux, with the plan to ignore him, ignore the vision, ignore the brother that wasn't his own, and go to sleep again. 

"I'm going to demand to have you transferred," Hux grouched, making a show of rearranging the blankets and pillows to illustrate just how irritated he was by this whole affair. 

"No you won't," Kylo muttered into the pillow, turning over to face the wall away from Hux. "You don't like it when I'm gone."

"That is flatly untrue. When you're gone the ship runs much more smoothly. It runs peacefully even. My people are not on edge constantly lest they set you off for some reason or another." 

"You miss me."

"You wish, Ren." Hux growled, turned himself over, his back to Ren, and he pulled the covers up tightly over him, ignoring Ren, and almost purposefully seeming to not be close to touching him, something that was a bit of an accomplishment considering that his regulation bed was much smaller than Kylo's and it now contained two people, both tall, and one the size of Kylo. "I'm glad you _aren't_ talking to me," Hux continued. "Going on and on about some problem or another that you've managed to create out of nothing from the Force, and keeping me from sleeping. Just try not to take up the entire bed, will you? Good night." 

"That's not what I do," the words sprang to Kylo's mouth and then he cursed himself for responding to Hux. 

"No, because it seems like that's exactly what you do. You create problems by obsessing over things that don't matter at all."

"They matter, you just don't understand them."

Hux let out a sigh and Ren could almost hear him counting to ten. "Then please explain to me, if you can, why I spent an hour the other night not accomplishing the reports I needed to do while you paced up and down the room muttering about Darth Vader? Explain to me, also, why you are here in the first place if you don't want a fuck and you also have not invented some problem or another that you believe needs solving? Hm?" 

"I had a vision," Kylo spat out before he could think about whether or not it was a good idea to do so. 

The silence between them was large enough that Kylo pulled his shoulders in a bit further, bringing his knees up, and curling in on himself. If Hux wanted to sleep, then fine, he could sleep. Kylo didn't _need_ him for any reason. And while it had been a terrible idea to come, leaving after he had arrived would be worse, giving Hux the idea that he could in some way exert power over how Kylo chose to live his life. 

"You're here because you had a nightmare," Hux stated flatly.

Kylo could feel his jaw tightening and he said nothing. He could feel the disdain and annoyance flowing off of Hux in waves. 

"This is my life. How did this become my life?" Hux muttered under his breath.

"Shut up, you're the one who wanted to sleep so badly," Kylo threw back at him. 

"Yes, before I had a bantha in my bed with me!" 

The half-flight of a memory crossed Kylo's mind, a boy of two or three with dark hair and chubby cheeks waking up from a nightmare, soothing hands on his cheeks, and the whisper 'it's all right, bantha cub. It's just a dream; it'll be alright'.

His eyebrows pulled together over his nose, and he pulled his arms into his body. The memory pulled up by Hux's unfortunate choice of words served only to push him back into the memory of the vision itself. Both the feel of dread and doom as he approached the fortress, and the knowledge of someone else threatening to steal his destiny - his legacy for this galaxy and to turn it into something _else_. 

He'd come face to face with this Anakin who claimed to share his mother and his father and his grandfather as well, and of all of those, it was the grandfather that had most shaken Kylo. Because he knew his Grandfather. He knew and understood Darth Vader better than anyone. Snoke had helped him, and had put into his hands ways of learning about his grandfather so that he could also learn how his grandfather had failed. And Kylo had studied this with an intensity that had made him certain that he knew these things. He could understand his grandfather's failures, and he could do better. And Snoke had promised to help him along the way, but how could he help if he didn't know everything? Guilt pricked at Kylo for having not told Snoke any of the things that had happened - not who the person was that he had fought, or the dreams that had followed. And maybe he knew… probably he knew… 

"Ren?" 

"What? I thought you wanted to sleep." 

"You're…" Hux let out his breath in yet another resigned sigh. "Do you realize you're shaking?" 

Kylo swallowed, and shifted away from Hux, towards the wall, but annoyingly, Hux hadn't been wrong about it making a lot more sense for Hux to come to Kylo if they were sleeping together, because Kylo's bed was larger, more comfortable generally speaking, so why had he even wanted to come here? He laid in silence for a moment, trying to calm his thoughts about his brother, the grandfather he'd thought he'd known, the sheer confidence of the Anakin who had confronted him - as if he knew that grandfather best. He tapped his fingers gently against his arms, and that calming almost worked. . 

He could feel Hux moving behind him, followed by a sigh, and the begrudging sense of 'he's here, I might as well take care of him', and then a hand warm on his shoulder, or maybe his shoulder was just cold. He didn't move towards it, but he didn't shake it off, and Hux seemed to accept that, and he could feel the other man slide in behind him, pressing his chest to Kylo's back as the arm wrapped around his abdomen, warm. And maybe, _maybe_ he pushed back against the warmth just a little, and some of the tension in his shoulders bled out. 

"You know they aren't real." 

"They are sometimes," Kylo muttered automatically, but for the first time since he'd been pulled awake by anxiety, he could begin to feel the edges of just how tired he really was and how easy it might be to allow himself to sleep. 

"This a Force thing?" 

"Yeah." 

"Okay." 

Exhaustion was a fog that had been held at bay by the panic of not knowing what the vision meant for who he was meant to be. There was knowing that probably Snoke realized that he was having these, somehow Snoke always knew, which meant that Kylo wasn't truly fooling anyone, only himself. Probably Snoke knew about this too, which inspired a fierce protectiveness of this entire moment. He couldn't control this other person, and he couldn't control Snoke, and he couldn't control what Snoke knew -

Kylo shifted in the bed, disrupting Hux's arm and causing him to frown in irritation at the disruption. 

"Ren, I'm trying to-" 

Kylo kissed him. 

The irritation was interrupted, displaced by surprise and then interest, and then Hux's hand on Kylo's bare waist, just ghosting along the edges of his hipbones. 

"I thought you didn't want a fuck," Hux murmured when Kylo pulled back. 

"I didn't," Kylo informed him. "I don't." But Hux's fingers along his skin threatened to pull him into forgetting about the vision, and offered him a quick path to calming his mind and sleeping, and who was he kidding? His body was already ignoring the words coming out of his mouth and informing him otherwise. "Just shut up," he told the General before he claimed his lips once more. 

Sleep came easier when his body couldn't help but be relaxed, and when it was late enough, and he was tired enough, surrendering into the weight of Hux's arm slid over his back was too much effort to resist. And when he woke, alone in Hux's bed, that wasn't particularly surprising - what _was_ surprising was the fact that he had slept through Hux getting up, and that Hux had not pounded him awake when he left the room but allowed him to stay. Kylo stared at the regulation grey wall for a moment. 

The night had been a mess he already regretted, but also… didn't. Something he didn't want to try to unpack today. There were other things - more important things - that desperately needed his attention. He closed his eyes for a moment, his skin savoring the feel of the sheets against it: The sheets on Hux's bed were _not_ regulation: They were nicer than regulation. The smallest edge of a smile curled up at the corner of his mouth, and he turned over, rolling up into a sitting position easily, and then the smile became a full fledged smirk. Sitting in the corner of the room on the table was his robe, folded and put neatly on the table, followed by his also neatly folded trousers, and this topped by the mask. Underneath the table both boots had been pushed back, side-by-side like they might have been in a store display. Typical Hux. 

Kylo pulled himself out of the bed, walked across to the refresher and pulled on the shower. He could have returned to his own quarters to do this, and maybe should have, but that would have required walking through the halls and the possibility of being requested or needed by someone, and he wasn't in the mood. Instead he pulled on the water and climbed in under the flow. Like most of the showers on the ship, it was too short for him, and he had to bend his back to put his head under the water to wash his hair. 

While he had told himself he wasn't in the mood to think about his actions the previous night, they floated back into his mind despite himself, and with the stray thoughts that were difficult to make sense of, also the feeling that everything was spinning out of control again. Kylo closed his eyes, reached for the shampoo and washed his hair and his body, and finally stepped back out again. One of Hux's towels was grabbed, and he dried off rapidly as he walked back into the bedroom. 

_Kylo Ren_.

Kylo froze, the voice in his head familiar, and at the moment unwanted. Not a safe thought, so he buried it, straightening his shoulders despite the bareness of them. 

_Yes, Supreme Leader?_

_I wish an audience with you today. At your earliest convenience._

_I will be there. I am ready._

_We shall see._

The words echoed in Kylo's head, not remotely comforting in their ambiguity and he forced back the urge to push his fist through one of Hux's walls. It felt unfair - Kylo had done everything asked of him and tried to push himself further than Ben Solo had ever gone - and he wanted it to be enough. He had thought that by now surely it would be enough. Some moments he would believe that he had succeeded, and then in others it would fall apart again, and right now it felt as if he was laying in the snow on Starkiller Base, aware in the Force that the planet was disintegrating underneath him and that he was going to die. 

Irrelevant. The whole line of thought was irrelevant and not useful. 

Current objective, to not get himself worked up again. Go back to his rooms, get properly dressed, go and see the Supreme Leader. Snoke needed him, and he wanted him to succeed. He had helped him all of this time, taught him so many things, and nothing Kylo had done in the past few months was unreasonable, or indefensible. 

He closed his eyes against that line of thought knowing that if he had to defend his lack of telling Snoke about the other Solo boy, he wouldn't have an easy way to do so. Even Hux, while Kylo could defend it as relaxation and nothing important - and it was _nothing_ important - it was also potentially a weakness, and one his grandfather had not learned how to protect against and Snoke might not understand that Kylo had no attachment to Hux. 

It didn't take him that long to return to his quarters and prepare for Snoke's audience. It was only a few moments later that he found himself, properly masked and subservient in the holochambers of the ship. 

"You have had many things on your mind," the Supreme Leader did not mess with a preamble as Kylo approached the holo. 

Without the time of greeting to gather his thoughts, Kylo stepped up to the line and looked up at the larger holo of the Leader. Grateful for the mask, although he knew it did not make any difference in shielding his thoughts, he could at least rest assured that his facial expressions did not give him away. 

"I have, Supreme Leader," he responded simply in the affirmative. "Ever since Raxus Prime, when you allowed me to study Vader's holocron, I have been… thinking more about him and how he succeeded but also how he failed." 

"You should not spend too much time contemplating Vader's failures," Snoke said, and there was a dismissive ease to his tone. "I would rather you contemplate your own, and how you may grow from them." 

"I believe I have grown, Supreme Leader," Kylo pushed back. "After Starkiller -" 

"After that fiasco where you recovered from killing Han Solo by being beaten by a scavenger," Snoke's words cut through Kylo's like the lightsaber had sliced through Han Solo's heart and again he was thankful for the mask, even if the wince could no doubt be felt by his master. "Let us call it what it was - actions not befitting a knight of Ren." 

Kylo's brow furrowed together and he looked down briefly knowing what was expected and liking it no more than he ever had, but knowing also that it was easier to get it over with. 

"After the fiasco," he repeated the words back to the Supreme Leader. "The teaching you gave me, the knowledge I gained from the holocron. I am stronger now. You must feel it." 

"Be careful, Kylo, that you have shed Ben's weakness. I sense light in you and I sense your own desire to turn towards it." 

"No!" Kylo's voice echoed in the chamber and he looked back down at the floor as the outburst created a louder echo than he had intended. "I am here, Supreme Leader. I am here because I believe in what we can do together." 

"Then you will tell me what is on your mind." 

"I had a vision," Kylo looked up again. "A vision of a place that I believe would provide me greater strength. An understanding of what my grandfather knew when he worked for the Empire." 

"What is this place?" 

"Unclear," Kylo stated. "I have not had time to research it since last night, but I would like to go there. To grow in the strength of the dark side that my Grandfather knew and practiced. The holocron was the first piece, but to fully become what I can be, I believe the Force is telling me that this is important." 

The silence in the room felt like a weight pressing the air out of it. Kylo forced himself to breathe normally as he awaited the Supreme Leader's response. When there was none, he finally raised his gaze to look at the holo. 

"No." The word was spoken casually from Snoke. His hand waving outwards, with no concern in his voice. "You are needed here, and you are not strong enough to undertake such a journey." 

Kylo looked down at this, anger and fury digging into him and threatening to overtake him, but taking his lightsaber to the holo would not change the words that Snoke was giving to him. "Supreme Leader," he began to try again. 

"You failed to bring me the girl," Snoke spoke harshly. "You were weakened by killing Han Solo. You have grown since then, yes, but you are still weak, Kylo Ren." For a moment there was silence, the words sinking in again, and then Snoke spoke again, but his words were almost gentle as he started. "I see this in you. But I believe you can be stronger, if you are committed to my teaching." 

Kylo swallowed the bile that had risen in his throat and he looked up at the holo in front of him. Asking the question felt more difficult than it had ever felt in his life. He should have told the Supreme Leader. Did he know? Was this punishment? He banished the uncertainty and fear to the back of his mind and instead gathered every piece of control he could find to ask calmly: "What do you wish me to do?" 

It was the correct question, and the words had no sooner left his mouth, than he could feel support and the ability to carry on wrapping into him despite the distance between them. 

"I am sending you to the Horuset system, to Korriban," Snoke's words were silky smooth, and despite the uncertainty that Kylo could feel at his core, the immediate knowledge that he'd said the right thing, and that nodding was the best thing to do, and taking on the task that Snoke was taking in front of him, and the other would fall into place. It would. "There is an artifact there that you will need to approach and return to the _Finalizer_ with the artifact in tact. There are lessons that I need for you to complete." 

"Supreme Leader," Kylo began. 

"Not now, Kylo Ren. You will leave as soon as your shuttle is ready and I will forward additional instructions to your shuttle comms." 

"Yes, Supreme Leader."

The holo faded out and Kylo was left standing in the chamber alone and uneasy as the sense of Snoke faded from an overwhelming sense to something less. Kylo didn't move, his breath coming somewhat quickly as he stared at the empty projection space. Had he not explained things properly? He was used to Snoke being able to easily understand the difference between things that were important and mattered and things that Kylo was making up and blowing out of proportion. 

Observation, Hux hadn't been wrong in his assessment - not entirely. But with the Supreme Leader's wisdom, it was an unnecessary concern for Kylo and always had been. He trusted the Supreme Leader to push the appropriate answer to the surface and to bury those things that were not. 

Why then was he currently standing in a holoroom with a sense of frustration and dread hanging over his shoulders? 

He breathed out and turned around in one motion and stalked out of the room leaving it empty and silent behind him. He returned to his own quarters and keyed himself in without turning on the lights. There was no need. On a small table in the main room sat a blistered and melted mask with a small spotlight on it. It was enough light to see by and it was not unusual for Kylo to come in and to not turn on a single light between the door and his bedroom. Today, too, he stepped across the room and took a seat in front of the mask. 

It had been his grandfather's, and Kylo had once believed that Darth Vader would speak with him. When he had first began with Snoke, there had been nights that he could hear his grandfather in ways that he had never heard him when working with the Jedi. And he had asked questions, tried to understand what his grandfather wanted of the galaxy and what he had tried to accomplish. It had been simple - or seemed simple - and Kylo had believed that as he became stronger, his grandfather's voice would only strengthen, but instead it seemed that it had fallen away. The last time he had heard it had been months before the destruction of Starkiller base. 

Since then, silence. 

"Grandfather," he started, an ache in his chest halting him. Since his return from Raxus Prime he had not tried again, afraid, perhaps, that the answers he was given would not be the answers that he wanted to hear. 

"I have tried to follow, to be the grandson you would have wanted, to turn away from the light. And now, I have had… I believe the Supreme Leader understands what is best, but I am torn," his voice cracked as he pushed forward. "I am torn because I have had a dream - I feel it is important. The Supreme Leader does not think so, and he is always right, but I am so -

"I thought it would - fix everything. You killed the Jedi, and you took up a new life. Killing Han Solo was meant to push me into a new life, but I feel it has only…" 

Made me weaker. It felt shameful to admit this out loud, and Kylo couldn't bring himself to push through the words. It wasn't just in the Force, it was his confidence, it was the way he used to be able to reach out and trust Snoke with everything. The sense of being needed and wanted that Snoke would provide him with, that was all that he needed, how come now it was no longer filling him with the sense of enough. Kylo knew that he could make mistakes, but there was something about this that felt important, and seemed impossible to put away for anything but the most important of missions and in typical Snoke method, the mission had been given no details, only the expected obedience. 

_And you must obey._

Whether this came from himself, from the Supreme Leader, or possibly from his grandfather's ghost, Kylo couldn't be certain. 

"Did you ever -" he started in a question to his grandfather, but the realized he couldn't voice it aloud. It was bad enough that Snoke could likely find it in his mind without him wanting him to. Instead he stood up and moved to his bedroom. The pack for the mission was essentially ready to go and Kylo only added a few things, a datapad, commlink, and some other items that would potentially be helpful on the planet where he was to be stay. 

Kylo wanted to ask his grandfather about the imposter grandson that Kylo had never met, but he instead stayed quiet throughout the packing, throughout the leaving of the room itself, and all the way to Hux's quarters. 

"Ren. Knock, request entrance, then enter," Hux's voice drifted irritably from his small table without looking up as Kylo came into the room. When Kylo didn't say anything Hux made a show of rolling his eyes and turning his head to observe Kylo. "You're going somewhere." 

"The Supreme Leader wishes me to undertake a mission." 

"How long will you be gone?" 

"You're not going to ask about the mission?" 

"Why should I?" Hux turned around now and looked over. "What is with you right now, Ren? You're acting even more ridiculous than normal."

"I'm not," Kylo's gaze fell on Hux and he realized he had the mask on still. He pulled it off of his head and looked at the general. "I'm not ridiculous."

"You can't help but be ridiculous. You're melodramatic. You're -" 

"Fine, I'm leaving then," Kylo interrupted too loudly. "Perhaps if I bother you so much you will be moved to a different ship and you'll never have to deal with me again." 

"That would be more than fine with me," Hux returned to his datapad. 

"Good!" Kylo snapped, but he didn't move, the feeling of unease still pulsing through him, unaltered by Hux's apparent disinterest in what it was he was doing. But to tell Hux would be admitting to himself that he still wanted to avoid Snoke's request and to go as quickly as was humanly possible to whatever place he was supposed to be going to. And then there was the reality that maybe he had hoped Hux would ask the question that he couldn't voice himself. He should have known that was pointless to wish for. Hux didn't question orders from the Supreme Leader. 

Hux huffed and turned around once again to stare at Kylo. "Were you leaving now or…?" 

Kylo's hand tightened into a fist and his jaw clenched. "Yes." 

"Perhaps we have a different definition of 'now'?" Hux suggested. 

"Perhaps I won't come back," Kylo snapped, turning on his heel and making his way to the door. "And then you won't have to deal with me either." 

"What the fuck, Ren?" 

"I'm going, now." 

"Except that you keep staying here, barking irrelevant things into the air, as if this is a theatrical performance that you expect me to have the script for," Hux stood up and walked across the room to stand directly in front of Kylo. "Last night you climbed into my bed at an ungodly hour, and now you're here to tell me what -- that you're leaving? I would have figured that out on my own. I didn't need a personal play-by-play." 

Kylo reached to put his helmet back on, but Hux reached out and put his hands on it to stay the progress. Kylo pulled a bit harder, Hux resisted with surprising tenacity and Kylo yanked it, But without any control in the motion, the helmet hit Hux's elbow, and then dropped to the floor rolling several feet away as Hux yelped his irritation at this turn of events. 

"What did you dream?" Hux snapped, his green eyes focusing in on Kylo's face, almost but not quite directly level with him. 

"It's none of your business," Kylo moved to retrieve the helmet only to find his arm grabbed by Hux, and he yanked it free. 

"You made it my business when you showed up in my room in the middle of the nightwatch and pulled me from my sleep -"

"You were awake," Kylo countered.

"- because you had a nightmare and didn't want to sleep by yourself -" 

"I wanted a fuck."

"- That's _not_ what you said last night!" 

The two glared at each other without moving or saying anything at all for a long moment. Perhaps each one felt that if they moved they'd give something to the other and they didn't want to do that. Kylo wanted to tell Hux - needed to tell someone - but if he did that it would be admitting to what amounted to treason. It was bad enough in his head, but spoken aloud would end him for good. Hux had looked after him, but Hux could not be expected to understand any of this and would likely go straight to the Supreme Leader. It would only make everything worse. He needed to go, to do what Snoke had asked of him. His shuttle would be ready, and there was no point in delaying it. There was nothing to be said to Hux that should be said to anyone. Most of it should not even be thought. Despite the fact that it meant he was the one who flinched, Kylo dropped his gaze, stared at the helmet, and then moved once more to pick it up. 

He was stopped again by Hux's hand on his wrist, but this time that was followed by a hand against his neck, and lips pressed to his warm and certain. Something dropped out of Kylo's stomach at the touch and his foot shuffled forward to close the gap between them as Hux persisted, and Kylo allowed it, unwilling to pull back even as his heart was pounding with a sensation that was unfamiliar and very different than anything he'd felt the night before or in _any_ of their previous encounters. When Hux pulled back, Kylo felt slightly as if Hux had somehow stolen the oxygen from his lungs. 

"In case you do something stupid and don't come back," Hux's voice had a sort of strangled sound to it. "Now go. Before I have to write you up for insubordination to the Supreme Leader." 

Kylo stepped back, putting his helmet over his head and without turning to look at Hux again he walked out of the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ultimately I cut, and rework everything in my original drafts out of the final draft of the prologue, but in this chapter, I couldn't seem to cut all of them out without it messing with the writing for me. So, in favor of giving credit where credit is due Kylo's tendency to assign himself objectives, comes straight from Hollycomb's [Children Wake Up](http://archiveofourown.org/series/386986) series, which was probably the first major SW TFA canon fan fiction I read. Her characterization of Ren in _Ceasefire_ has dug itself into my head and become a canon of its own that will probably forever impact my writing of Kylo Ren.


	5. Rey

"I don't like this."

Rey sat at the table in Leia's quarters with much of an uneaten dinner before her. Her gaze shifted up towards her mother and her brow furrowed slightly despite her best intentions. It likely wasn't the best way to push forward, but the art of diplomacy was not always the best for survival on Jakku. Sometimes you had to posture and get the other individual to back down, and even if she suspected that this wasn't the way to deal with a mother, it was still habbit. 

Somehow she had thought that asking for the mission would be the simple part, but maybe neither she nor Leia knew how to do familial relationships that well. Rey hadn't done a family relationship for over a decade, and had only limited and child-like memories of what she once had been privy to. She was beginning to get the picture that maybe they weren't the easy, simple comfort that she had made them out to be on long lonely nights on Jakku.

This wasn’t to say that the conversation was going _poorly_ exactly, but it also wasn’t turning out to be what Rey had hoped. In her mind she would walk in and break bread with her mother, who would listen to the recap of her and Anakin's conversation, and would then agree that it did seem that something should be done about that, maybe with an extra addition about how Rey didn't know her grandfather and this was a good opportunity to learn a bit more about him, and 'May the Force be with you' on your travels. Long nights in Jakku had given her a vision of a mother that wasn't reality. It wasn't that Leia was unkind or harsh, but she did have expectations, she was questioning, and she didn't give in easily. Rey had kind of dreamed up easy support from her mother, and so skeptical questioning had been a surprise even if Rey realized maybe she ought to have expected it based on her interactions with her Mother thus far.

And perhaps it wasn't fair to be surprised as Leia wasn't distant, at least no more than Rey herself was. They were both getting used to having each other again after all, but Rey herself had accepted Anakin's idea with such willingness that it had not occurred to her that her mother might not follow in the same. After all, Anakin was her brother, and he was more knowledgeable about any of the Jedi things than Rey herself was currently. She had begun to learn pieces from Luke, yes, but they were only small bits of a whole that Anakin had been fortunate enough to grow up with. Her perspective was different from his, but his belief that this was what needed to be done - specifically it was what he needed to do - was enough to pull her in and put her on board.

After all, Darth Vader was her family as well as Anakin's, perhaps more so in this galaxy, although she didn't judge or hold onto that with any tenacity. The girl who had found her family unexpectedly after spending over a decade waiting for it was not about to block someone else out of that room - particularly not someone that she liked as well as this younger brother from another galaxy.

Rey leaned forward over her plate slightly. "Anakin's been there before."

"Not in this galaxy he hasn't," Leia offered the rebuttal with the ease of someone who was used to doing so. "Do you even know what he's expecting to find there?"

"He feels like it's important," she hesitated and then added. "He thinks it may help Ben."

It was easier to refer to him as Ben, the older brother she had regained some memory of, a boy who was incredibly smart and competent, if also quiet and sometimes awkward. Able to put together a good joke, but with a streak that could mean humor at the expense of someone else - although never Rey. She had no memory of him harming her, not until that day on the _Finalizer_. That day he had peeled off his mask, but she hadn't recognized him - not then, why would she? She hadn't seen him more than a decade and what memories she'd had were still blocked behind someone else's walls. They were walls that had begun to weaken at his push, and had shattered completely when she pushed back against him. 

She hated that it was his invasion that had started her recognizing the people around her as something more than kind strangers - or in his case terrible ones – as if it were something she had to owe him. Yes, they would have come back in time, particularly once she started training with Luke, but she didn't like the fact that he had 'helped' her in any way. That man on the _Finalizer_ still didn't feel like the Ben she'd grown up with. But just because those memories had come out of something dark didn't mean they couldn't become something more.

Rey was still uncertain what that something more meant. She could tell when she talked to Anakin that this meant saving their brother. 

Rey was less certain. 

She had seen people who were pushed into horrible actions, and who were incapable of telling the truth, or being kind other than when it best served their own ends. And while it gave her no pleasure to think of Ben, the older brother who had given her candy from the candy jar, or let her follow him around the Senate chambers, as this sort of person, she was well aware of how frequently this happened. Growing up on Jakku meant she'd been faced with it time and again until she'd found herself self-sufficient, not out of particular desire, but out of necessity.

But she'd wanted more. She believed in more. Finn had been her first sign that something more could happen. And finding out who he was and what he'd come from, that had only convinced her of the possibility of it. But Ben: Kylo Ren. He was a question mark in her head, a torn subject between her desire to believe people could be better, and the gaping hole he'd left in her when he had killed their father. He’d grown up with their parents, as best she knew for most of his life, while she’d been taken away and lived without anyone. 

How dare he destroy that?

Could someone come back from what he’d done?

Regardless of her own confusion where Ben was concerned she had not thrown his name into the conversation without thought. The idea of Ben's redemption was one that held weight with her mother. Despite Han Solo's death it seemed that Leia continued to believe there had to be a chance to save her son. Rey had watched him kill Han, then fight with Finn and nearly kill him, and then he had tried to get her to join him. She had good reason to be less convinced than her mother or her younger brother, but she was also willing to admit that she might be wrong even as she wondered if this was not the way that Leia was choosing to fill up the hole that Han had left in her life.

"I want to talk to Anakin about it," Leia continued, despite the softening in her eyes that Rey wasn't certain anyone else would have noticed.

"That can probably be arranged," Rey shrugged. "He was willing to talk about it with Finn and Chewie and I."

Leia pursed her lips together and was quiet before she finally shook her head gently. "I just don't want to lose you again, Breha. I worry."

Rey considered this, her given name feeling awkward to her still, but she wasn't about to deny Leia the right to use it. Even if Mom still came more difficult to her than Leia or General Organa.

"You worry about Anakin too," she suggested tentatively. It felt right, even though she knew from her conversations with her brother that he wondered if his presence wasn't more upsetting to Leia than not. And maybe with all of this, it was at least partially a way to get away from the base and the Resistance and to stand on his own feet. Something he would have already done if he had his own ship and ability to leave.

"Yes, I do," Leia sighed. "I do indeed, and if this can help, then I suppose I have no choice but to let you go, knowing that you've learned a great deal about how to care for yourself, and I suppose up until this year you had no one looking out for you - for which I'm particularly sorry - but it doesn't change the fact that you likely don't need me."

“Of course I need you," Rey protested instantly.

Leia smiled and there was a wistful edge to her eyes. "That's not what I meant. I meant that you have been taking care of yourself for a long time now, and you've trained with Luke. And Anakin is a Jedi, apparently, you wouldn't need my protection in this way, whatever else you might yet have need of."

"That's… probably true," Rey admitted.

"I'll contact Anakin and we’ll do dinner at his earliest convenience, and I'll see what his reasoning is." Leia shrugged. "I cannot say I have any desire to visit a fortress that Belonged to Darth Vader, if such a thing even exists in our world, but that does not mean it is not a part of _your_ journey. We all have to come to terms with the things in our pasts in our own ways and it seems that Anakin has done that, perhaps. If he can help you do so-" Leia fell quiet, and her eyes dropped to the plate in front of her.

Rey nearly asked her mother what had happened with Ben. When he’d found out, and if he’d come to terms with it – or if that was part of what had happened to turn him into the person he now was. But she could sense every time it came up an unease pouring off of Leia.

Finally Leia looked back up. "I think it's possible Anakin may be able to help you do this now, right now, in a better way than Luke or I could ever do. We lived with all of this in a different way than you do, than Ben did. We looked this man who was our father in the eye and we dealt with that in our own ways, and I'm not certain they were wise ones," Leia's eyes were crinkled with sadness even as they did not lose their warmth. "Like you, Anakin never had to look him in the eyes, but he still had to look at him. Like you will, like Ben did. It is worth it if this will allow you to do that fully."

"Kylo Ren wanted to be as strong as Darth Vader," she ventured slowly, not really looking at Leia as she turned over the memories she'd managed to pull from her brother's mind. "He was afraid he wasn't."

"I should have told him, maybe," Leia sighed. "I was afraid perhaps that he would turn out to be like that - that maybe if he learned when he was older, he would be strong enough - understand to not want to be any of it."

"But Luke…"

"Luke was a Jedi, and he was still trying to figure out what that meant. I wasn't certain that was a life I wanted for Ben - at least... I wanted it to be something he chose. You as well, before you were taken.

"At first I said nothing because I didn't know how to say it to a child, and then I said nothing because he was older and it felt unimportant, and then it was too late for _me_ to say anything at all. He had heard it from other sources, and he was already frustrated with me and Han, and angry for the loss of his sister. Sometimes I wonder if he didn't simply allow any dislike of us to strengthen into admiration for a grandfather he'd never met and never could, but who intrigued him by virtue of being completely different."

"But everyone knows that Vader was -" Rey stopped considering the pieces that she'd heard. Her mother watched her carefully and she frowned. "I guess with as many who still supported the strength of the Empire, and a central government, perhaps it was not so clear cut."

"I have seen holo reports that suggest Vader only took things 'too far', but that he had the right idea," Leia shrugged. "And if you listen to Luke, then you know that in the end Vader was strong, but not in the manner that Ben thinks."

Rey knew this story, having been told it in detail and with a bit of sadness from her Uncle. It had been one of the first questions she had asked - about Vader - and he had told her, stopping to ask a few questions about Kylo Ren along the way. That strength that Vader had pulled on in the end seemed to be an emotional vulnerability that Rey had found in her Uncle and that was more tightly controlled, but still a part of her mother, and that she saw in Anakin as well. Perhaps she had it too. It was difficult to tell for herself.

It was almost certainly the sort of strength she saw in Finn too. Perhaps it was part of why she liked him.

Finn joined her for dinner that night, sitting down across from her and immediately launching into everything that he'd done for the entire day. Rey didn't mind this, largely because she could tell that throwing himself into something he actually _wanted_ to do was a big deal for Finn. For his entire life he had been told where to go when, and how to do what, and there had been this lingering threat over his head that if he didn't fall into line he'd be reconditioned or reprogrammed in some way, so being at the Resistance and choosing to be there in the morning and choosing to stay every additional morning wasn't a small thing.

Rey knew this absolutely. She could feel it in his sense as he slid in across from her and as he took ownership of the day's activities easily. And so it had become a sort of ritual every night, with Finn talking and Rey listening until whatever point Finn stopped to take a breath, and he'd look at her and he'd ask: "What about your day?"

Today Rey's chin dimpled as she looked over at him. "Well I talked to mom.”

"About the trip?"

"Yeah," Rey nodded. "She wants to talk to Anakin, but I think it's a go. At least… no, I'm sure it's a go."

"How'd'ya know?" Finn tilted his head at her.

"Because… after she said she wanted to talk to Anakin before saying okay, she then went on this whole thing about it being important to find out things about Darth Vader. And I'm pretty sure that means she's going to say yes."

"That's what we want right?"

"Yeah," Rey nodded.

"I'm coming with you," Finn reminded her and she grinned.

"Yeah, I know. You and Chewie and Anakin and me. It should be quite an adventure."

"You don't think Anakin's going to want to bring anyone else with us," Finn nodded across the room.

Rey's head turned to see Anakin sitting across from Lieutenant Kaydal Ko Connix, and Rey's cheeks pulled up in a dimpled smile. "I think Kaydel Ko is needed here," she opined.

"Yeah, but I think Anakin would like her to be needed on the _Falcon_ if you know what I mean," Finn retorted.

"Why are you so worried about everyone's love lives?" Rey looked over at him.

Finn looked as if he'd been caught stealing someone else's scavenge. "I'm not!" he protested evenly. "I'm just saying they've been, you know, cosy."

Rey turned around to look at her younger brother to watch him. Maybe Finn was right. It just seemed like he was always mentioning people who were together, and maybe it was the fact that growing on Jakku and knowing that her family would come back, and she didn't want any such relationship on Jakku to make her regret leaving, but she hadn't paid much attention to it. She knew how to avoid unwelcome attention, and keep to herself, to watch her back, and keep herself safe, but she had only ever thought about any of it in reference to keeping herself safe. She considered Anakin now, leaned across the table as he listened to something Kaydel Ko said, and then he grinned, ducking his head as he did so and reaching for food as he responded something, not long, but enough to get a laugh from Kaydel Ko.

"Kaydel Ko is older than him. She's older than I am," Rey mused.

"Doesn't look like it bothers Anakin too much," Finn said. "That's all I'm saying."

"Well, there'd be no reason to bring her," Rey turned back around to her plate. "I mean, if Anakin really wanted to, I don't know that it wouldn't work, but there's no reason for it."

"So if your mom agrees," Finn pulled the conversation back to the mission. "What's next?"

"We track a course to Vjun," Rey dipped some bread in the stew in front of her. "And we look over what we've got on the planet to best prepare for what we can expect. And we get Anakin to tell us a bit more about what happened when he visited, best as he can from his memories to help supplement possible outcomes, depending…" When she looked up Finn was grinning at her. "What?"

"You're just really good at this."

"Which part?"

"The whole planning thing."

"It's like planning a day’s scavenge," Rey pointed out, but a rush of warmth hit her cheeks. "You figure out where you're going, what you know of what might be there, look at previous events to figure out what you might be able to pull from that particular trip, or upsets that you should be prepared for along the way. Only this is… traveling across the galaxy."

"Which is a little different," Finn grinned.

"A little," Rey conceded. "But I've done it more now, and Chewie had some good tips. He did it all the time with Han."

There was a moment of silence between them. Finn eating his food and Rey eating hers as she considered the different things Chewie had taught her on the way to find Luke and then again on the way back. She'd had such brief time to learn anything from Han, but there had also been parts of everything that had been easy - knowing precisely what to do to fix the _Falcon_ and even how to fly it. Those things had been natural outgrowths of what she'd done on Jakku, just as this was. She'd dipped the last bite of bread in the soup when Finn finally spoke again.

"You never call him ‘Dad’." Finn was looking at her kind of seriously. "But he is, so why not?"

"I met him as Han Solo," Rey offered. "Well, I mean, I did more recently, so it just feels more natural."

"You don't call the General ‘Mom’ either."

"Because Leia also feels more natural." Rey hadn't really tried to unpack why that was. "The idea of my family being these heroes that we'd heard of, even on Jakku… I'm still getting used to it."

"Guess that makes sense," Finn said.

Something in his voice made Rey looked over at him and she held her gaze on face. When he looked up and their eyes met he looked away again. She leaned forward towards him. "What is it?"

"It's just," Finn leaned across the table. "I don't know who my parents were or are… I don't know if they're alive or dead and I don't even begin to know how to find that out. You walked off Jakku and found your Dad, by luck or chance or the _Force_ , I don't know which, but you got that. I just - if it were me, I'd call'em Mom and Dad."

Rey wondered if she should have felt scolded by this, instead she just reached for her cup and took a drink of the water in it, still on some level in awe at the ease of doing so. Perhaps it was how she felt about Han and Leia as well. They were her parents, she could call them that, she didn't - maybe she should? Or maybe this was as much about Finn as it was about her.

"Look I'm sorry, I shouldn't-"

"I get it; it's all right." Rey shook away his apology with a brief shake of her head. She looked over at him instead as she put the cup back down carefully, running one finger gently around the rim. "Have you talked to anyone? About trying to find your family?"

"Yeah, I mean, sort of?" Finn's brow wrinkled and he looked off in the distance. "Poe said he'd help some if he could. But it's a big galaxy."

"You can share my family," Rey offered with a quick smile.

"Careful they might not want to share, and they've already got Anakin over there, plus then I'd have to share your crazy brother with the Vader obsession."

Well, yes, there _was_ that.

And that was nothing to scoff at really. The fact that Finn was willing to put up with any of it wasn’t something Rey took for granted either. After all, Finn been around Kylo Ren even more than Rey had. If he’d taken one look at her and decided he wanted nothing to do with being her friend, she wouldn’t have blamed him at all. Instead he’d stayed, and quickly became one of the closest friends she had, even as she had begun to acquaint herself with others, like Kaydel Ko, Anakin, and Jessika. 

The next afternoon Leia had sat down with both her and Anakin and after a series of questions, a few heated conversations between Anakin and her mother, and what felt like a long deliberation on Leia’s part, they'd been given Leia's blessing.

To be fair, at some point in the process Rey had wondered why that blessing really mattered to her or to Anakin. She had a ship, which meant she had freedom, and she'd never been beholden to anyone else's notions of where she should be or what she should be doing - why would she start now? She had agreed it might be a good thing to do, which meant Anakin had what he needed, and it seemed likely he might have made enough friends around the base in the time he'd been here to be able to get them the other information that they needed.

But when Leia had pressed her lips together and finally breathed out and said 'you should go. You should both go', Rey had realized why it mattered. Because being beholden to anyone's idea wasn't the point. Instead it was knowing her family believed in her ability to make good decisions and choices along the way. She could live without that knowledge, but there was something much better about having asked and received and Rey could tell, almost without thinking about it or asking him, that Anakin felt exactly the same way.

Rey wondered if Anakin could tell the same thing about her. It was a sort of unexpected knowledge, not entirely as if they were connected, but like she was very easily able to read his cues and she couldn’t help but wonder if that was something to do with the Force, or if that was unusual even for the Force and if it was more – like a sibling bond - even if that also felt ridiculous. It was something to ask Luke about when she returned to find him, but for the moment it was time to pour herself into the task of getting ready for departure.

As it turned out, Anakin was almost as good at planning as she was, and she supposed considering the fact that he’d led actual missions with a number of Jedi before she shouldn’t be surprised by this. But despite the fact that she couldn’t help but be aware of the fact that he likely had more experience than she did, he didn’t seem to push his ideas, and instead at times seemed to ask her to expand on one of his. It was almost as if he was offering a sort of deference to her which at times felt absurd. It was nice to be considered, even if she knew her knowledge of what they were doing was still a growing and expanding thing, but she tended to throw back on Chewie whenever she had a question because Chewie knew this galaxy way better than she could have. 

This was particularly true two nights later that they sat in the _Falcon_ 's main hold around a holo-projection as Zayna explained what she'd been able to pull from the information they'd gathered from Raxius Prime. It was Rey, Chewie, Anakin, Finn, and Zayna and her intel, which Rey had to admit was pretty impressive. 

"Basically, I don't think you're on a wild goose chase with any of this," her gaze settled on Anakin for a moment. "But then you pretty much knew that." 

"I didn't," Anakin shook his head. "I mean, it seemed likely that it might be true here as well as at home, but I had no definitive proof - only my dream. This is all going to be helpful when we're trying to figure out where to land." 

Chewie roared a question and Zayna and Finn both stared at him.

"He's wanting to know if Anakin navigated there before," Rey explained. 

"And the answer is no," Anakin stood up. "Which is another reason why this is going to make our lives a lot easier. Otherwise I'd be trying to figure it out from dreams and visions and if I can, I'll just say that I'd rather not." 

Rey couldn't keep her lips from pulling into a smile at that statement. The few visions she'd really had, she could completely sympathize. She wouldn't have wanted to try to navigate anything based on those visions - not even her life. 

"So we've got a location," Finn said. "That's good right?" 

"It's a start anyway," Anakin stood up and walked over to the holo that Zayna had left active. "Was there anything about weapons systems?" 

"Unfortunately nothing that specific," Zayna looked over at him and shrugged. "I mean, I had to really dig to get this information, and it was only because I knew what I was looking for. The fact that Vader had a castle on this planet, seems to have been pretty need to know, and also, pretty thoroughly buried in the aftermath of the Empire's fall." 

"So when you say weapons systems…?"

"I mean security," Anakin looked back over to Finn and then turned to catch Rey's eye as well. "And I don't know that there will be anything. When Tahiri and Tionne and I explored _inside_ the castle, there were certainly traps that were laid - so I think we should all be very aware if we get into it, because some of them were incredibly dangerous - difficult to sense, even with the Force. What we don't know right now is whether or not there will be any external security measures." 

"I mean, the First Order base definitely had security systems," Rey looked over at Anakin. "So if this was an Imperial base…" 

"It was, but it was also Grandfather's castle; his private place where he kept things that were important to him. It's possible he didn't want weapons systems protecting things, but rather that he wanted to use the Force." 

"So what would that look like on the outside?" Finn asked. 

Anakin was silent for long enough Rey wasn't surprised when he shook his head. "I don't know," he answered truthfully. "Most of the tricks I know to use the Force require a long term commitment of your mental abilities. There aren't so many that would stay in place when he was off world, or now - when he's completely dead. At least, none that I know of." 

Rey would have liked to have found that encouraging, but considering the silence that descended into the room after Anakin's response, she knew that the others, like her, were turning it over and finding it less satisfactory than they would have liked.  
"All right," she said. "So we go in knowing that we're likely going to encounter the unexpected," she said. "It'll be just like every scavenging trip on Jakku." 

*Did you have Force weapons on every scavenging trip on Jakku?* Chewie growled.

Anakin's lips quirked up and he laughed shortly. "We expect the unexpected, that's pretty much the story of my life. Sounds like it's the story of Rey's, and don't grumble Chewie, cause you were still my Dad's co-pilot here, which means I _know_ it was your story too." 

"Well if those rathtars were anything to go by," Finn shrugged. 

"Rathtars?" Zayna's eyes widened. 

"Rathrars?"

Chewie grumbled something about Han thinking it was a good money-making opportunity. 

"My dad was transporting rathtars?" Anakin looked over at Finn and Rey. "You've got to be kidding?" 

"Nope. First time we met him, he had a transport with three rathtars." 

"And a group of people angry at him for not paying or something." 

Chewie growled the correction to this while Anakin shook his head. 

"All right, well, on that note," he looked at all of them. "I think we've got as much as we can from Zayna here." 

"Oh, sure," Zayna quipped. "Dismiss me just as the Rathtar story arrives and things get interesting." 

"Well, you can stay, but I'm guessing you aren't interested in a trip to Vjun."

She shrugged. "How would you know, Jedi? Can you read my mind?" 

Anakin looked slightly taken aback at the question and was about to open his mouth when he was interrupted by a woman's voice from behind Rey. 

"He possibly could, if you haven't learned mental shielding." 

All five heads towards the entrance. Mara Jade was standing in the doorway, in a practical flight suit and vest. Rey had met her only a couple of times, her mother having introduced Jade as a friend of her Uncle's. Anakin seemed to recover first. 

"Mara Jade, right?"

"That's right," the woman stepped into the room. "Anakin Solo. You know me?" 

"Yeah," Anakin hesitated. "You were one of my teachers, at home. Sort of. We ended up kinda spending a lot of time on Dantooine together." 

"Really," Mara's eyebrows quirked up. "Well, I'm sure that got old rather quickly." 

"I learned a lot there, actually," Anakin stuffed his hands in his pockets. 

This silence was almost as wary as the one that had followed Anakin's pronouncement of the possibility of Force related traps earlier. This time it was Rey who broke it: "Not to be rude, but why are you on my ship?" 

"I'm here to join your crew." 

"What?" 

Finn's surprise echoed Rey's own. She knew of Mara, and she knew that Leia considered her a friend of Luke's, but Luke hadn't mentioned her at any point in time when she'd been with him, and she didn't know Mara at all. Resistance members having proven mostly trustworthy at this point in time didn't mean she was precisely looking for anyone to join the team. She glanced over at Anakin, but he didn't look particularly surprised, in fact, if she didn't know better he and Mara were having a conversation that had nothing to do with the rest of them. 

"Why?" She asked finally. 

"You're going to Vjun. Zayna here has told you that there is a fortress on that planet, one that Vader owned originally." 

"How do you know that?" Finn looked over at her. 

"Because I know Zayna's been slicing things on her free time, and because I've been there." 

Zayna looked uncomfortable as she stepped back from the holodisplay. 

"She's not going to inform on you," Anakin said to Zayna. "Don't worry about it." 

"You seem awfully certain of that." Zayna muttered under her breath to Anakin. "Is this another Jedi thing?"

"No, cause I can't read _her_ mind," Anakin responded. "But I know how the Mara Jade I know tends to operate, and unless I'm very wrong, she'll hold onto that information, but she won't be likely to make use of it unless she needs to." 

"Okay, but that just means I don't need to worry about her doing so right now," Zayna pointed out. 

Mara's lips had formed a cool smirk. 

"Can we go back to the place where she said she's been to the Fortress?" Finn asked. "Cause that's the part I got stuck on." 

"You worked for the Empire," Anakin coolly leveled at Mara. 

"I did."

"As his hand?" 

Mara tilted her head. "I was never referred to as that, but I suppose it's not an inaccurate label." 

"When were you on Vjun?" 

"About three years before Endor." 

"Wait, she worked for the Empire? Like _the_ Empire?" 

"Not unlike you worked for the First Order," Mara returned cooly. 

"Can you tell us anything about the Fortress?" Anakin questioned. 

"Yes." 

Rey waited for a follow-up and when one didn't come she glanced over at Chewie. His expression had remained steady with Mara's appearance and she couldn't see any hesitation or alarm in his posture. Nor was there any in Anakin's. But he didn't look particularly confused at the lack of follow-up either. 

"You're only going to give us that information if you come with us," she ventured, and looked over at Anakin who had caught her eye now. "What's in it for you? I mean, why do you want to come with us, outside of you have this information?" 

"There were rumors that Vader kept things in that Fortress. Sometimes things that related to the Jedi. I haven't had the opportunity to check those rumors, but if some of them are true, I feel that they could be helpful to the Resistance now - particularly as we fight Snoke." 

"Who is Snoke?" Anakin asked. 

"He's the main honcho, the main dude, the one everyone gets their orders from." Finn piped up. 

"And he's Force sensitive," Anakin nodded. "I've gathered that much. And I've gathered that Kylo Ren answers to him. But who is he, or who was he?" 

"He used to be a Jedi," Mara said softly. "But that was many years ago." 

"He what?" Zayna found her voice again after having seemed to want to be quiet and hope that Mara forgot about her infractions slicing. "A Jedi?" 

"At least I believe so," Mara considered. "I'm hoping that this trip will help me confirm that one way or another." 

"We'll need to talk about it together," Anakin said simply. 

Rey nodded. "We'll let you know tomorrow. Either way," she looked at everyone else around the room. "We're leaving the day after before dawn. And thank you Zayna. Can you leave us a copy of what you've found so we can review it if we need to?" 

"Yeah, no problem," Zayna shrugged. 

"All right, then we've done everything here that we can for right now."


	6. Anakin

"I ran a few additional scenarios last night."

Zayna Ardellian had found Anakin as he cleared out what few belongings he had accumulated over the past few weeks. He nodded his head to invite her into the room, although she seemed to have already assumed the invitation as she had started stepping forward almost before he'd stepped back. The door slid shut behind her. 

It was an hour of the morning when the only other people awake were probably those who had to run the night shift, some droids, and possibly the breakfast crew. Anakin, on the other hand, hadn't slept all night. He should have, but he hadn't wanted Rey to have to wait on him at all, so he'd stayed up, reviewing the information that Zayna had sliced out for all of them, running it against what he knew from his own experience on Vjun, and what he'd gathered in knowledge bases when he'd first started looking at the differences in histories between this galaxy and the one he'd known at home. About two hours from when they were set to leave, he'd stopped, put most of this away except for in his thoughts and taken to getting ready. He'd used the sanisteam to get clean in a way that allowed for more luxury than he expected to have once they got on their way, and then he'd started packing up his stuff. He'd told his mother that if she needed to reassign his quarters while he was gone, it'd be all right. He'd figure out something when he came back - whatever that something was. Right now he was mostly packed, but was wearing only a pair of trousers and an unbuttoned ivory shirt that more resembled his father than the Jedi clothing he normally wore. 

To say he hadn't been anticipating Zayna when he opened the door was an understatement. He'd figured it would be Finn, or possibly even Poe, who had promised yesterday he'd be up early enough to see his three friends off. Anakin reached for the buttons on the shirt he was wearing to close it up, although despite his sudden attempt at modesty, Zayna seemed to have not noticed and he couldn't decide if this was a good thing, or if it annoyed him.

"Scenarios?" He asked as he finished the buttons. "Also, shouldn't you be sleeping?"

"Well, I figured if you guys are about to go off to maybe get yourselves killed, the least I could do is give you helpful intelligence. Scenarios might be the wrong word - but I spent some time last night trying to dig into any intelligence or rumors or suppositions that I could find regarding the use of the Force to protect or secure locations." 

"Oh," Anakin definitely hadn't expected that. "I thought -"

"That I don't believe in the Force? I didn't. But you've kind of convinced me that I probably better stop on that particular line of thought. I don't have any real explanation for how I'm alive if I don't start believing that it's real. That said - do you realize _how hard_ it is to get stuff about the Jedi or the Force that has any likelihood of being truthful? There's so much made-up stuff." 

Anakin stepped over and sat down on the edge of his bunk to reach for his boots. "Yeah, I've got an idea. At least I know how difficult it was for Uncle Luke to find stuff in my universe." 

"I mean, maybe if I'm a Jedi, there'd be some sort of trail I could follow, but I'm not. There's a lot of legend and myth and some of it sounds pretty fantastical, so then I'm left just disbelieving again. Then again, I wouldn't have believed that I could survive a jump down that elevator shaft so -" 

Anakin sat back up and considered the sense of her in the Force and the look on her face and the fact she was here in his room staring at him. "You found something though." 

"Several things that I don't know if they're actual things. And some of them I pulled from, well…" she shrugged, and Anakin got the impression she didn't want to fill in where out loud. "So if anyone asks…"

"They're things I learned from Uncle Luke in my universe," Anakin nodded quickly.

"Yeah, exactly that's good."

She didn't continue, but Anakin didn't push. He had a little bit of time and he could wait for her to put her thoughts in order. 

"One of the things I learned was that there were temples - and not just the one on Coruscant - but across the galaxy." 

Anakin nodded. "Rey said Uncle Luke was looking for one - the first one even." 

"Yeah, well, you may be headed to one." 

Anakin brought his gaze up to hers, but she looked completely serious. "On Vjun? This fortress? _Vader_ 's fortress?" 

"Well, it makes sense doesn't it? The Empire destroyed the Jedi. What better ways to destroy an enemy completely than taking what was theirs and turning it into your own?" Zayna stepped over so that she could sit down beside him. "That's what this would have been. What I'm not sure about is whether or not it was still in use at the time that Vader took it over, but I do know that I was able to track down multiple legends of Jedi activity on Vjun back during the pre-Imperial Republic. 

"The first one I noted, but I wasn't going to say anything about it," Zayna pushed a stray hair back from her face. "But I found four _separate_ legends indicating something. Unique enough that they seem to be different stories. Two of those contain a Jedi temple on Vjun at one point in the history of the old Republic. The others included Jedi, but also Sith? So I started digging a little bit deeper. There's a lot on the temples that isn't known, and maybe there are things you knew from your world that will be relevant here - but it seems like they had their own forms of protections - things that might not have been able to been breached by someone who wasn't a Jedi."

"My grandfather, at that point in time, he wouldn't have been." 

"Exactly," Zayna shrugged. "Maybe what you're looking for, isn't necessarily directly related to him." 

"Do you know where it was located?" 

"Nope. I don't even know for certain that it existed, but three mentions? In three distinct, but oft repeated in variation of stories? That seems like smoke, and there might be fire." 

Anakin nodded, a frown crossing his face as he wondered if this was even a part of the vision he'd had. Tahiri hadn't said anything about it, but then again, Force visions were notoriously lacking in specificity. Maybe it was important. Yes, it felt like if Vader wouldn't have been able to get into a temple they wouldn't find anything useful about Vader in that place, but maybe that wasn't the point of it. Regardless, Vjun wasn't a small planet - would they even be able to find this temple? Anakin's visions thus far had focused largely on his grandfather - on the man he had become and the man he had inspired - not on something larger than that and Jedi legend definitely covered a territory broader than that. 

"Do you have what you'd found?" 

Zayna grinned with a quick raise of her eyebrows as she reached into the pocket of her jacket and pulled out a drive and held it up between two fingers. "What do you think Jedi?" 

"I think you're brilliant and you've been a tremendous help." 

"Yeah, yeah, flattery isn't going to make me like your crazy Force stuff more." 

"That's okay," Anakin gave her a quick lopsided smile as he reached for the drive. "You don't have to like the Force for it to be a real thing." 

Zayna rolled her eyes and stood up again. "You're taking everything with you," she commented as she looked at the duffle in the middle of the room and his open drawers. 

I don't have that much stuff, but yeah," Anakin followed her lead and stood up, stuffing the drive down into one of his trouser pockets. "I figured they might need the room for someone else while I was gone - and since I don't know how long that will be." 

"Well, just make certain you come back. Pretty sure the General's already worrying about you lot, even if she wouldn't say so." 

Something made Anakin look at her more carefully, but before he could really pin down the moment, she was walking towards the door. She pressed the button before she turned around: "May the Force be with you, or whatever it is you guys say." 

Anakin nodded, a smallish smile at his lips. "Thanks, Zayna. For all of it." 

"You owe me, Jedi." 

"That I do," Anakin watched the door close behind her. 

The room was silent in her departure and he stood absorbing that quiet while he reached out to the Force to meditate on what he'd just been given. He didn't know if it was important and maybe he wouldn't know for certain until they arrived. He also wanted to sit down with Rey and talk it over with her, but that would have to be after departure. 

Departure was simple enough. Poe made his promised appearance and he and Finn had a conversation that felt almost as if it were in their own language. His mother was there and she offered both Anakin and Rey a hug, if a brief one, and best wishes, and then the team headed on board the _Falcon_. 

It was weird to step back and let Rey handle takeoff and departure even though Anakin knew he wasn't needed. Between Rey and Chewie, they more than had the procedures covered and so he'd settled back into the main hold, leaving Finn and Mara to take the extra seats in the cockpit if they wanted them. 

He had assumed they would, so it was a bit of a surprise when Mara joined him, although Anakin realized even as he thought it that perhaps it wasn't so much of a surprise after all. She didn't know him. Granted she didn't know Finn or Rey that well either, but she had been cautious around him thus far. Unlike Rey and Finn, who were so different from what he knew, and Chewie, who was different, but also such a welcome presence he could overlook the differences completely, Mara fell into a category more like his mother. She was different, but there were similarities. Mara had always been observant, sceptical, and cautious. She didn't rush into anything, and she valued intelligence, and she hadn't had the opportunity to get that from Anakin. 

On the other hand, Anakin had learned a thing or two from Mara Jade in his own universe, and while he might not be able to look at her and expect precisely what he got from home, whether this Mara operated the same way or not - he'd learned something about the value of knowing something about the culture and individuals you were working with… and he'd learned a lot of that from Mara Jade. 

"I'll apologize in advance for if I call you Aunt," Anakin buckled the crash belts for take-off and turned his ice-blue eyes to gaze at Mara. This didn't seem to phase her, and Anakin hadn't expected that it would, she buckled her own and considered him. 

"Does your mother have another brother or sister or did I marry your Uncle?" 

"You married Uncle Luke. Took you guys long enough. But then it kinda took you a long time to become a Jedi too. Although maybe not as long as here," he added with a shrug. 

Mara looked amused at this. 

"You said you worked for the Empire once, but not as the Emperor's Hand?" 

"I wasn't called that, but I'm not sure what his hand would be - if I used the Force to help bring justice to the Empire at behest of the Emperor directly, then you might as well say that I was his hand." 

"That's probably a good description. Were you a Sith?" 

Mara considered this question as the ship began the take-off procedure. "It's been ten years, and it doesn't sound less like this will fall apart around us," she murmured as a rattling near them got so intense that if Anakin hadn't been able to reach out in the Force and see that it was simply one of the environmental controls rattling against a panel, he probably would have been more concerned. 

"No," she said finally, over the rattling that had intensified. "I would say no, although I did use the Force for a Sith. But Palpatine wanted servants to do his bidding. If I had been too powerful, that would have endangered that wish, so my training was rudimentary - less in philosophy and more in practicality. I wasn't really taught to think about light or dark so much as results." 

"Your mother said there were three of you," she turned her questions back on him. "You're the youngest?" 

"Yeah," Anakin nodded, figuring that it probably was time he returned some information for her. "We're all three Jedi. Uncle Luke started an Academy on Yavin IV and trained some of us. Well, and others, but we were kind of the first group of young students I guess."

"How old?" 

"I was eleven when I went there. My best friend," his memory conjured up blonde curls and for a second he was reminded of Tahiri in his dream. "Tahiri was nine. You and Uncle Luke were married by then. There was a big deal about it - the New Republic's Jedi master marrying a former Imperial Agent. It was all 'the end of the war'. 

Mara sniffed. 

Anakin grinned. "Yeah, that's about how other you felt about it," He hesitated and then added. "You and Uncle Luke aren't together here?" 

For a second Anakin thought she was going to refuse to answer, but instead she tilted her head. "It's complicated. We're close, but I don't know where he is currently, no one does. Except possibly Chewie and Rey." 

"Have you been together?"

"Were you anyone else, I would not allow this line of questioning," Mara cautioned. 

"Yeah, I know." 

"Before everything fell apart with Ben, we knew each other." 

Anakin waited, but it seemed that was as much as she was willing to give him and so he nodded and fell silent as he listened to the sound of the Falcon exiting the atmosphere for space. It was a calmer ride by that point, the shields and thrusters having kicked in to create what was nowhere as quiet as the yacht he'd taken his last trek in, but helped him relax from constantly checking that the whole ship was going to hold together either. 

"You have a son named Ben where I'm from," Anakin said suddenly. 

Mara turned a piercing green gaze to him. She'd always been too good with her shields at home for Anakin to ever really know what his aunt was thinking, and here seemed to be no different - for better or for worse. "Interesting," was all she said aloud, even though Anakin was pretty certain the information he'd given her had been far more than 'interesting'. "You met Ben - Kylo Ren - and fought him." 

"Yeah," Anakin nodded. "While we were looking for evidence of a connection to the First Order and the Octab Industry." 

"You certainly found that," Mara remarked, but the words were more a type of congratulations than an interruption. 

"Zayna and I went down - we found what almost appeared to be an old Imperial training center, but it did have information about the First Order, or at least, shipments to the First Order? And then we found -" Anakin broke off. He hadn't really talked to anyone about the holocron or what had happened in the room with it. He wasn't certain he should with Mara now. He'd planned on bringing it up to his Uncle - when he'd met with his Uncle - but now with his vision he'd pushed them into this mission which felt important, but at the same time, probably lengthened the amount of time that would pass before he could share it to with his Uncle. And he probably should mention it to someone. "I found a Sith holocron." 

Mara raised an eyebrow at this, but Anakin could tell he had her full attention. 

For a moment he hesitated. This wasn't his Aunt - not in the same way that she was at home. He didn't really know where her allegiances lay completely. She'd been at the Resistance base and the fact that she had been told him that she was trusted there. But she wasn't married to his Uncle and she didn't know him. 

On the other hand she still knew the Empire and she still had worked alongside his Grandfather presumably. She knew the Emperor and she knew how he thought. 

"Do you know what Raxus Prime was?" 

"Other than a support system for the Empire?" Mara queried, raising her eyebrows at him. 

"Why would a Sith holocron have been there? Was it there from the Imperial days? Or was it moved there recently?" 

"I can't answer that," Mara said. "But you saw it?"

Anakin nodded. The holocron had been different than any he'd ever put his eyes on. There had felt like there was a presence in the room, something drawing him in _to_ the device itself, and it was still unnerving. If Zayna hadn't pulled him back, he wasn't certain what would have happened. Probably nothing that was any good. Talking about it had been something he'd hoped to do with his Uncle - not with an Aunt that wasn't his Aunt, and who he didn't know very well. Then again, he realized, he didn't know his Uncle very well in this universe either. He might be too different, not like Uncle Luke at home. 

"It was like it called to me," he said. 

The admission crawled up his skin, but it also felt important. If he couldn't admit his weaknesses, then weren't they more likely to be left unchecked by the rest of the team? Zayna had pulled him back before, and she hadn't - so far as Anakin knew anyway - realized what was happening, and maybe that had been the Force at work, but he couldn't risk it again. Yes, he knew what they were going into in theory, but in practice it might be far different than what he was anticipating. In practice it might be still occupied by someone, by the First Order, even by this brother he'd fought before. So it felt important to be prepared. 

"It called to you," Mara repeated the words but her tone gave away nothing of what she was thinking. 

Anakin tried not to squirm, knowing somehow that she wasn't criticising, or judging - the judgement he felt was on himself. "That's what it felt like. I saw it, and recognized it as a Sith holocron, and then it was like a magnet that pulled me in. If Zayna hadn't called to me… I don't know. I might have touched it, opened it?" 

Mara leaned back against the seat and for a moment her gaze seemed to find the table in front of her and so it stayed. "I have no experience with Sith holocrons, and very little with Jedi holocrons, other than to know of them. There was a rumour that I heard a few years back - oh, probably nearly a decade now - that Darth Vader made a holocron at one point. It doesn't entirely fit what I know of him - and I'm not certain that the Emperor was aware that he had done so - if he had been, I can't imagine that he ever intended that holocron to see the light of day. But it might make sense now…" 

"You think what I saw was my Grandfather's holocron?" 

"You said it called to you?" 

"Yeah, but he wouldn't know me. And a holocron isn't…" Anakin stopped. He'd been about to say a living object, but it was imbued with the Force and opened using the Force. It taught via the Force, matching the levels and knowledge of the user who was in front of it. And there was still a lot that Anakin didn't know about holocrons. He'd found them, used them, and been granted time with them as a student, but there was a lot that was unknown even, he suspected, by his Uncle. Was it possible that somehow the holocron had sensed that he was a grandchild of Vader? It seemed strange even to him, but perhaps not the strangest thing that had ever happened to him with the Force. 

"Kylo Ren - Ben - he seemed obsessed with Darth Vader. If that was Darth Vader's holocron, then he must have known it was there." 

Mara pressed her hand to her lips for a moment, and Anakin was sure she was going to say something, but it appeared that she thought better of it and instead she leaned forward. "It's a good thing that you didn't open the holocron, if that's what it was. I don't see you being easily infatuated by a Sith holocron, but something from your Grandfather, knowing more about him, that would be a more difficult path to turn away from." 

Anakin swallowed. Mara wasn't wrong. If he'd opened it up and found his grandfather there, even his own reasoning might have failed him and he might have found himself going deeper in, rationalizing that he wasn't going to turn to the Dark Side, he just wanted to know more about his own grandfather. Had that been what happened to Kylo Ren? 

That thought echoed around his brain as he thought about it. Ben Solo would have been an only child at the point his sister had been kidnapped and presumably was dead, and he'd been left alone. If he'd discovered a grandfather he hadn't known about, and a way to grow close to him. If he hadn't gotten along well with his parents…? It wasn't a far stretch. 

Anakin breathed in. There was no point to assigning to Kylo Ren reasoning that had no evidence. Anakin knew too little about this universe and his 'family's' place within it. 

"Why there though? Someone must have put it there, because wouldn't it make more sense for it to be someplace like Vjun? Somewhere in this castle that was more or less _his_? Especially if he didn't want the Emperor knowing that he had put one together?"

"That's my speculation," Mara warned. "Let's not put too much stock in it. But it seems to me that Vjun would have been the obvious place for it. So far as I know Raxus Prime was a supply depot - nothing more, nothing less. It's run by Centrists now, so it has given its support to the First Order as a part of that, but I agree if it was Vader's holocron - then someone moved it there from elsewhere. There were only rumors - Luke and I were never able to track anything specific down."

The addition of his Uncle's name made Anakin look over at her. At some point it seemed that Mara and Luke had worked together on something. He supposed that was a story he might get in the future, but he couldn't imagine Mara going into details if she didn't wish to. The idea that his grandfather had made a holocron - even a Sith holocron - meant that Anakin was feeling torn. He had no interest in the Sith, or the Dark side, and he'd spent most of his life running from it. But so far as he knew, if such a thing had existed in the galaxy he was from it had been lost forever, even to memory. The idea of a connection with his Grandfather was more powerful than he'd like to admit - even if that connection was Darth Vader and not Anakin Skywalker. 

He pressed his lips together and unfastened the crash strap. "Well, we may never know at this point, unless we catch up with Kylo Ren and he's willing to tell us one way or another."

Mara raised both eyebrows at him, but didn't say anything as he turned to walk towards the cockpit to find Finn and Rey. 

The trip to Vjun from Lothal would be slightly shorter than the trip to Raxus Prime had been. But this still allowed Anakin, Rey, and Finn plenty of time to start practicing together. At times Mara would step in with one or the other of them, but particularly with Rey and Anakin. Anakin found it fascinating that so many of the typical movements he was used to from his Aunt remained the same. But as surely as he relaxed into what he expected, she would throw in something that he didn't and he'd ended up fighting to keep his footing solid. In that way, it was like almost everything else in this galaxy had been - familiar, until something just wasn't and it threw him off course once again. It was a frustrating, but he was beginning to get used to it, and with Aunt Mara it was perhaps just a good reminder that he was still learning everything and he couldn't get too cocky or rely too much on previous knowledge. 

And that was a good reminder for this universe. Something that he might just need to fold into his life wisdom and hold on to as he moved forward. 

Anakin had trained enough with Rey that they were good at both catching each other, but also they had to work to throw each other off. It meant that theirs was a different sort of challenge, and one that Anakin genuinely enjoyed. 

Finn was the one that Anakin didn't know at all. They hadn't practiced when they'd been on the Resistance Base - Anakin had mostly practiced with Rey at that point. But Finn had a knowledge of melee weaponry, and so as they passed time in travel, he started stepping up to practice telling Rey that if he ended up having to fight with a lightsaber again, he'd prefer not to be knocked out for several months as a result. 

They'd set up with regular practice weapons first, for safety's sake. Finn was quick, well trained, and he had a good instinct which served him well. Anakin could typically best him, but every so often Finn would move in a way that genuinely surprised him leading Anakin respect a quick mind beyond the training, and gain a suspicion of something more. 

A couple of days out of Lothal Anakin met Finn in the cargo bay where they had set up a practice area for all of them. It was just Finn as Rey and Mara were up in the cockpit discussing directions with Chewbacca, and Anakin had asked Finn if he wanted to practice. He picked up one of the practice weapons they'd been using and the two sat into a beginning round with it. They parried and ducked, jumped and thrust, and when Anakin damped down on the Force, not using it, Finn ended up besting him. 

He chuckled and put his weapon down to the ground glancing over at the other man with a grin. "Good work."

"You cheated," Finn eyed him. 

"What?" Anakin laughed. "I didn't cheat, if anything I just leveled the playing field for you." 

"That's cheating," Finn pointed out. "I need to learn how to fight you Force people, and I can't do that if you're not using the Force." 

Anakin tilted his head and there was a grin that crossed his face. "Fair," he admitted and pressing his lips together thoughtfully, he tossed the practice weapon down and reached for his lightsaber. He used the Force to toss the weapon towards Finn and Finn caught it awkward but sure. 

"What's this?"

"I want you to try something," Anakin walked over towards the wall and picked up one of the helmets, tossing that towards Finn as well. "Put that on and put the shield down."

"What?"

"Just do it," Anakin pushed and reached in his pocket for the practice remote. 

"I can't see anything," Finn pointed out.

"Yeah, I know," Anakin responded easily. "That's kinda the point. I want you to try to block the practice remote with the lightsaber."

"Without being able to see anything?" Finn protested.

"Yep," Anakin shrugged. "Look, it's not going to do more than sting, trust me, but I think you can do it. You just have to feel where the remote's going to hit and be there with the saber first."

Finn seemed to frown at this, even if Anakin couldn't see the lines on the man's face he could feel the sense of it in the Force, but he switched the lightsaber on with the snap buzz, and Anakin let the remote go. 

It circled and Anakin could see Finn trying to follow it with his ears. For a moment Anakin let him do it, and then shook his head and offered the correction: "Try not to get too focused on the noise, it could deceive you, focus on that instinct - that gut feeling you get sometimes." 

Finn adjusted his stance as the remote fired and hit him squarely on his hip. "Dammit," he swore as he jumped to the side. 

"Keep focused," Anakin suggested. "I know it hurts, but focus that into not letting it happen again, that sense you got just before - when you knew yeah, I'm gonna get hit - feel that but _use it_." 

Finn looked as if he thought Anakin was crazy, but he stepped back into the center, raised the lightsaber again. Anakin watched him as an easy sense of determination could be seen in his stance, the raise of the lightsaber, and even something less tangible than all of those things - his presence even. 

Anakin could feel when the remote was firing and this time Finn's lightsaber raised and while it didn't catch the bolt full on, it caught it enough to deflect it, and enough that Anakin grinned. 

Finn had already switched off the lightsaber and pulled off the helmet. "I got it!"

"Yeah," Anakin's grin was broad. "You did. Not full on, but enough that you were able to deflect it. Did you feel it?" 

"I did, kinda, just - where my gut took me." 

"Yeah, that's pretty much it," Anakin nodded. "You've got some Force sensitivity Finn, I'm pretty sure of that." 

"Like Jedi stuff?" Finn looked at the lightsaber in his hand. 

"Like Jedi stuff," Anakin nodded. "I don't know how much, but I've wondered for a while. I don't have a way to do a more certain text, but I'm pretty certain you've got some." 

"Whoa," Finn turned the lightsaber hilt over. "I guess, I mean, I didn't really expect that. Rey's got it, I knew that." 

"It doesn't…" Anakin shrugged. "It doesn't mean you have to train, or even be a Jedi necessarily. I'm not certain how that works here when there's not really any place to train anyway, but if you want me to show you some things…" 

Finn nodded and was silent for a moment. Anakin gave him some space. He was certain enough that he didn't feel bad saying something even if he wasn't certain of _how_ Force sensitive Finn was. It wasn't something he had ever tried to test himself and he'd never asked his Uncle how to do the tests even though he knew that Uncle Luke had things that he was looked to in order to determine someone's level of Force sensitivity. All Anakin had was instinct, and now this. 

"Well, I mean, I guess it can't hurt to do a few things huh? We've got a little bit of time." 

Anakin grinned. "Yeah, we do. You and Rey and I could sit down together and go through some of the stuff. She might have stuff she's learned from Uncle Luke in the meantime that'd be helpful for both of us."

"That sounds like a plan," Finn agreed. 

Anakin wondered momentarily if this was what it had felt like for his Uncle when he'd found someone who had the Force who was willing to be trained. Anakin had never thought much about it before. He'd been in a class of multiple Force sensitives, with a class of multiple force sensitives ahead of him with his siblings, and some that were out being actual knights and masters, but in this galaxy there weren't any other Force sensitives that were trained. Here it was different. Here there was himself, there was Rey, and now there was Finn as well. It was something… and Anakin realized that whatever happened when he finally met his Uncle that he wanted to find others and train them. It seemed important in a way that it hadn't seemed at home. 

It was later, towards the sleep cycle that would be the last before they arrived at Vjun, when Anakin peeked into the cockpit to see Chewie there. He wasn't in the pilot's seat which was empty, but rather in the co-pilot's seat, large enough to fit him and Anakin stood for a moment as the relief and pleasure of seeing Chewbacca sitting in that seat washed over him. It felt right, right in a way nothing at home had felt right since Sernpidal. Right even if everything else about this galaxy felt wrong. He thought to go on to his bunk and rest, but thought better of it and rapped gently on the doorframe. 

Chewbacca turned and roared a welcome and motioned to the seat next to him. 

The pilot's seat wasn't his. Anakin knew that well although he'd flown the _Falcon_ before at home. It was his father's primarily, but with his father gone, he'd seen that it was Rey's, and he had been reluctant to take a seat there even for a moment of conversation that had nothing to do with the flight of the ship they were on. But somehow it seemed that if Chewbacca said sit - said it was okay - then Anakin would take him at his word. 

He sat, glanced over the control panels, his eyes noting differences where they popped up. Mostly things were so similar, but then there were controls here or there that had been replaced. 

Neither of them had anything to say for many moments. The silence, rather than awkward, stretched into companionable and familial, at least for Anakin, but when he reached out in the Force to find the Chewie-shaped presence in it, he could feel that Chewie was comfortable in the silence as well and so he leaned back into the pilot's chair and his mind began to wander. 

He'd done so much thinking since he'd come here, but most of it had been prior to Rey's arrival. He hadn't had time since they'd made the decision to travel to Vjun to even begin to think about any of the rest of it. He wondered briefly what his Dad would have had to say to him here, had he been alive to say anything at all. His mother had treated him with so much caution - would Han have done the same or would he have, like Chewie, found a way to pull him into his life? His Dad was frequently more straightforward. If he'd been alive, maybe he would have been that way with Anakin too. He would never know, and his relationship with his Dad at home had been challenging ever since Chewie's death. Anakin had begun to think that maybe he was beginning to have something again, and then this - being here - well, it wouldn't matter now would it? 

He could tell that Rey was angry at Ben still. Anakin could sense that, and he could understand it, even relate to it a bit. After Anakin had spent years trying to make sense of the grandfather whose name he shared, to have a brother in any galaxy that decided to follow straight into Anakin Skywalker's footsteps and to become Darth Vader all over again, was enough to make him furious. Anakin had managed, so everyone else ought to be able to. But Anakin was honest enough to know that he hadn't always managed. That Master Ikrit and others had called him out on his anger, and that there had been times… the Darkness was never so far away as anyone would like - not really. 

Ben had lost a sister. Anakin understood well enough what losing family could do to someone. Rey had now lost her father, and Anakin too in a weird round-about way… 

"You were there that day weren't you?" Anakin broke the silence finally, and turned his gaze to Chewbacca. 

The Wookiee raised his own head to look at Anakin. For a moment he didn't speak and Anakin wondered if he should have asked the question or allowed it to stay a silent knowledge with very little understanding to support it. 

* _I shot him._ *

Anakin knew without asking that Chewbacca was talking about Ben - Kylo Ren. Sometimes it was still difficult to think of a brother with his cousin's name, but thinking of him as Kylo Ren seemed to separate him out from being family, and difficult was the norm for most things when one had been dropped in a completely different universe. 

"He killed dad," Anakin said simply. He wasn't going to judge Chewbacca for that shot. If he'd been there himself, who knew what he would have done? And if the next time he met Kylo Ren he injured any of Anakin's family or friends, the likelihood that he might do something like that seemed strong. 

* _I couldn't kill him. But I shot him._ *

Anakin nodded. Despite the topic, there was something comforting about the Shyriiwook in the cockpit. It felt like home as much as anything here could. He could close his eyes and lean back in his Father's chair and feel as if he were back in his own galaxy before the war… before the Yuuzhan Vong. 

"I didn't know when I met him. At least, I didn't know that he was - well that he was Ben. When I was fighting him I was angry at what I knew of what had happened with Dad." 

* _Han offered him the chance to come home._ *

"That's what Rey said too." 

* _He will need to be stopped._ *

Anakin nodded at this. That much was certain, but what was less certain was precisely what that meant. He looked over at Chewie trying to gauge the Wookiee's feelings about this. As well as Anakin knew a Chewie, it was still more difficult to do than he would have liked. 

"I'm hoping where we'll headed will give us some ideas for that," he said finally. 

* _You're looking for your grandfather's castle?_ *

"Yeah," Anakin bit his lip. "But more than that. I'm looking for… I don't know what I'm looking for, but I've got a feeling something that we need is going to be found there. At home it was a better understanding of my grandfather. Maybe it's the same thing here, but maybe it's not me that needs that understanding this time. I don't know. I just know that's where my gut is saying we need to be." 

* _Your gut, or the Force?_ *

"Both, I guess. Skywalker Force, Solo gut," he looked over at Chewie and his smirk gave way to a lopsided grin. "Guess we'll find out if I'm right or wrong." 

* _Not that much longer now either,_ * Chewie growled and looked at the display of current location. 

"I should go back to my bunk," he offered, wondering if Chewie would prefer the watch alone.

* _Stay if you want._ *

Anakin considered this, and pulled a knee up, and leaned his head back. Maybe he would, for just a while longer. It felt like home here. He couldn't deny that sense nor how nice home felt.


	7. Ren

The pressure of expectation weighed upon his shoulders more heavily than any armour. 

Kylo Ren's shuttle was moving towards the Supreme Leader Snoke's coordinates, but that felt wrong. As he stared out of the viewport into the mottled blue and white of hyperspace he was unable to relax. Relaxing might be overrated in his training with Snoke, but the insistent voice of Skywalker stayed in the back of his head. "You will be at peace when you are calm, centered." 

No matter how far he ran from Jedi teachings they stayed there, making him feel shame for the teachings he now embraced even if his current beliefs held much more for him than anything that he could find from Luke Skywalker or the Jedi. Snoke had offered him power and acceptance as an instructor, and the honesty that he had often wanted from his Uncle and his mother and his father. Still, like the persistent call to the light he could not keep the Jedi beliefs from haunting him or seeping into his thought processes particularly during moments like this one where there was no one else to speak with and nothing else to do. And now he found himself in the odd position of not wanting to give Snoke honesty. Perhaps the truth was that he was always alone.

He pulled a deep breath in and utilized one of those Jedi teachings in an ironic effort to clear his mind. He had never been able to meet the standards and expectations. Those expectations and standards had come from hypocrites - people who would not even follow their own teachings - they had no place in his life. But he would use what he could to help him in his path. He would not pretend to be what he was not - therefore, he would not be a hypocrite as they were.

His job currently was to refocus his priorities. The weight came from the realization that the Supreme Leader expected him to follow in this path and to succeed, something that he had failed to do with various missions recently, most notably the nonsense with the droid and the scavenger, but less obviously what had happened on Raxus Prime. But the Supreme Leader had offered guidance and suggestion - the teaching that Kylo desperately needed - and Kylo could improve. 

Yes there was lingering distaste over the way that Snoke had dismissed his request, but Snoke had also sent him to spend several days with his Grandfather's holocron - something that had not been true training, nor something that would help the First Order. That had been a gift, something that Kylo had been grateful for, and his payback had been to keep things from Snoke. 

He didn't deserve anything that he'd asked from Snoke. 

The vision still gnawed at the inside of his head, but maybe Hux had not been wrong about the possibility of it just being a nightmare and not being real. There was some oddity in taking Hux's advice as valuable. Hux was competition for the Supreme Leader's preference. Wasn't he?

Hux had taken him aboard the _Finalizer_ and had left him until Kylo had thrown out two different medical droids, both in more pieces than they'd came to him in. Hux had returned with a third and he had stayed, a steely look on his face as he'd provided a paternal tirade to go along with all of it. Mostly Kylo had wanted to put Hux in pieces alongside the droid and set him out, but by that point sheet exhaustion had set in beyond what strength he could pull in from the Force and so he'd stopped fighting the droid, recognizing the easiest way to get out of the situation was to submit to it, bide his time, and gather his strength. 

What had surprised him was that after the droid had gone, Hux had stayed. He had stayed through the night, requested a datapad to continue his work, and had stayed again. When he had finally left, it had been only for a shift, and he'd returned to find Kylo more awake and aware. Hux hadn't really spoken to him, but had just sat down and began working again. 

Kylo had been able to feel it then, that sense of exhaustion, a steely core of determination that had traditionally been something Kylo had recognized as a way to push back against him, but in that moment he'd recognized it as something additional - a determination to keep going in the face of the losses he'd obtained, and the fear under the surface that he'd messed up too badly this time. Coiled around that determination was a tightening anxiety, and Kylo had observed it and rather than taking delight in it - using it against Hux - he had let it stay.

He had let _Hux_ stay. 

And in return, well, they had both found a way to release some of those anxieties, even if that had created new anxieties for Kylo. He suspected that Snoke knew, how could he not? But he had said nothing either in approval or disapproval. Kylo suspected it would be disapproval. Everyone knew what Vader's weakness had been. Then again, Hux was hardly an attachment or a weakness, so if such worrying or disapproval existed on Snoke's end - it was unnecessary. 

An alarm shot through the cockpit yanking Kylo from his reverie. His eyes lifted to the alarm indicators and then moved forward to check systems. The alarm was a warning that he would be exiting hyperspace outside of the schedule, which couldn't be a good thing. 

"Kriff," he muttered as he recognized the error message on the screen and then he started moving - shifting levers, preparing the ship for returning to subspace so that it would happen in a way that wasn't likely to tear the entire ship apart. The blaring of the alarms could be ignored as he worked, but the deep shudder that moved through his shuttle made him grateful he had kept his crash harness on. Stars blinked back into real-time around him and Kylo stared at them for an instant before pulling up location, diagnostics, and ships logs. 

What in the nine Corellian hells had just happened?

He checked the sensors but there was nothing to suggest that he had been pulled out by a tractor beam. Kylo dove into the Force to look for interruptions that might show him that something was there that couldn't be picked up on by the mechanical sensors. But nothing could be felt outside of normal life within the Force with the stars too far away to be anything other than brief pin pricks the things that he could actually pick up on. 

Kylo turned to the side panels. He began a series of systematic checks on the ship's systems itself. Had the hyperdrive failed, had some other component of the ship failed and thus triggered the hyperdrive quitting? As he worked he focused the Force onto the ship, but mechanics had never been his strong suit. He could do a simple fix of some systems, yes, but he didn't know the First Order's ships nearly as well as he did other models and while Skywalker seemed to be able to look at a ship and know, Kylo had never had that particular skill in the Force. And the system checks he was running might take hours to uncover something in a system as complex as this shuttle's. 

He pulled himself out of the Force and into the present moment, turning back to the main control panel to check life support. It was steady and there was no sign that there were any problems with it. This lifted some weight off of his shoulders because life support could last him for a while. The next thing to check was the sublight systems and as he read the console he realized that subspace engines were still working. He wasn't 'stuck' exactly, he was just limited in how far he could go before his fuel and life support would run out on him. 

But the fact that subspace was an option, made him turn back to the navigation panels. 

"Where am I?" he muttered as he looked up the coordinates on the navigation map. He was near to crossing the Salin corridor, which was both bad and good. The good meant that if he sent a distress signal someone might hear it. The bad was that if it was the wrong person that heard it and arrived it would complicate his life. 

The nearest planet was probably ten hours away by subspace, but as Kylo pulled it up in the First Order's database there was very little known about it. It had once been used as an Imperial base, but that base had been mostly abandoned. So far as Kylo could tell there were no native residents, or if there were, they were so small in number that they went largely unnoticed or unconsidered by the galaxy at large. The atmosphere was breathable, if perhaps a little highly sulfuric and charged because of the number of storms on the planet. 

Kylo looked back at the status reports that were still chugging away. Until he knew what was going on with his ship he was hesitant to call the First Order for assistance, and he was more hesitant to put out a general distress call. After a moment's thought and an attempt to determine if that was the best course of action or not, he set the coordinates for the nearest planet and moved the ship up into subspace once again. 

As the ship began to move, an alarm silenced. Kylo sighed. It was possible the alarm ceasing meant that nothing was wrong. It was also possible that it meant that the entire shuttle was about to explode underneath him. But despite the one silenced alarm and the still blaring alarms, Kylo had no sense of danger or anxiety - not like he'd had the night before - and his danger sense had thus far kept him alive. 

If he proceeded towards the planet while the system checks worked to figure out what had happened then he would be somewhere safe to work. Once he had an idea from the computer of what had broken, then he could figure out if it was something he could fix, or route around, or if he was going to need to call for the First Order to send a shuttle after him.

This idea set like bile in the back of his throat. 

Snoke always specifically said if Kylo was intended to take First Order troopers with him. This had been a mission he'd been handed without that directive, which meant that he'd taken his shuttle on his own. There were some maintenance droids that would be working along with the system as soon as the system made the diagnosis. But the whole point of these sorts of missions was to avoid calling attention to them. And generally Kylo would land quietly, and not hesitate to wipe the memories of anyone involved that needed to forget that he was there. 

That was something he was good at: wiping memories, finding memories, uncovering hidden memories and pushing in past what people wanted him to see. It was a skill that he was proud of, the sort of skill that Skywalker would have hung with dozens of restrictions and rules and ethical obligations, but the sort of skill that Snoke particularly praised him for. 

It was easier to think on the thing that he was proud of than those skills he lacked. Unfortunately, he could not memory wipe the hyperdrive into submission, which might mean that he would need to contact the _Finalizer_. 

He could wipe Hux's memory. 

That thought sat in his brain for a while and he turned over the ramifications of it. It was not impossible, but it would be complicated to completely wipe all existence of the event. There would be calls logged, actions and orders logged, there would be multiple personnel who were involved in retrieving the shuttle and Kylo, and others that would be involved in correcting the problem. It was likely the sort of effort that was not worth it from any rational perspective. 

Kylo pressed his lips together and decided to put this worst case scenario out of his mind. Especially because, besides the logic of the idea, he found he did not want to wipe Hux's memory. It felt like the sort of thing Hux would not take kindly to, and Hux was a fairly determined individual, although not Force sensitive, which would make it both more difficult and more likely that he would begin to remember at some point down the road. That Hux might recall Kylo doing this seemed even more distasteful than the notion that Hux would know he'd called for help in the first place. 

Besides all of this - he was wasting his energy considering options that were unlikely to be required. He would run the system check, and the droids in the back would be able to make the necessary repairs, even if Kylo's skills in that arena were lacking, but truly, that sort of work was beneath him anyway. If you enjoyed messing around in engine grease and cutting yourself on metal edges of ship parts, then that was fine. But Kylo didn't enjoy it, had never enjoyed it, and had no desire to learn it. That was, after all, why one had droids and repair teams. Kylo was neither droid, nor repair team. 

The smart thing to do would be to sleep. There were ten hours at subspace speeds and he could do nothing to speed up the diagnostics, but he found he could not get comfortable. 

The shuttle he was in had been built for him. Not the entire thing, but the cockpit had been made with his height and attention to details that would work for him in mind. So he ought to have been able to find some position that was comfortable for him to relax into. Instead he found that his legs felt cramped, or his shoulder blades hit the seat wrong. He could leave the cockpit, of course, but under the circumstances, and with the subspace speed, he was more reticent to do so. If something went wrong and he was needed - he might be needed more quickly. 

Finally he ended up crossing his arms over his chest, pushing his head back against the headrest and staring off into space. It wasn't as hypnotizing as hyperspace, but it had been a long time since he'd traveled this long at subspace speeds. The First Order, as the Empire had before it, had a tendency towards grandiose spaces which reminded you that you were a small part of the whole, but the stars and the blackness tended to enforce this in a way that even the large spaces of Starkiller base could not truly accomplish. 

Kylo Ren might be one of the most powerful people in the First Order, easily on par with Hux in terms of influence upon Snoke, but could he still be lost in this space? 

For a moment his mind drifted back to the view of Han Solo falling over the edge into the darkness. 

He had looked so small. 

Kylo pushed his hands to his temples and banished the image and the thoughts that came with it. Or at least, that was the attempt. 

When he had first found Snoke it had been simple. He had been angry. He had been _so_ very angry. He'd been lied to and betrayed about things that ought to have been his to know from the time he was very young. And on top of that he had been imprisoned within the bars of everyone else's expectations. Maybe even, ironically, everyone else's fears. Ben had been caged, and Snoke had allowed him to come out - to set his own expectations and goals. Snoke had given him a new name and Kylo Ren had been born. 

When Ben been five he had been with his mother in one of the botanical gardens on Chandrilla. She had remarked about the beauty of a flower in an Alderaanian display. There had been the sadness and regret laced in her voice, although Ben had been too young to truly understand what the emotion was that he was feeling. He'd picked the flower with the Force. It had been a foolish notion - the idea that a flower could solve his mother's problem - but he'd been too young to really understand the depth of her issues that had nothing to do with the flower. He'd picked it, he'd given it to her, and he had not been too young to understand the dose of frigid cold. Leia had offered a smile, but it had been short lived, and on its heels had come scolding for picking flowers in a display, for using the Force for something so frivolously, and underneath it all - the disruptive sense of icy waves that undid every bit of calm that could be viewed on the surface. 

The edge of that cold lingered still. 

Or maybe it had just been reborn when he had dealt with Han Solo. 

Or maybe he would never get rid of it. 

Dealing with Solo had been supposed to be a first step to killing whatever remnants of Ben there still were forever, instead Kylo felt as if those remnants, once buried, had pushed up more prominently of recent: the scavenger: this kid who looked so like Han Solo. 

He was certain that Snoke could sense these pieces and the weakness and emotion each contained. They were damaging to his focus, like a hundred thousand shards of shattered glass, alone perhaps none would kill him, but each could pull his focus to them and keep him from focusing on the true mission and the work that he needed to be doing. Maybe this was merely the proverbial storm one had to endure - and when they were gone - when this was over - he would be okay. 

"Help me Grandfather," he murmured into the cockpit. "Please show me again the power of the dark side." 

There was silence in the cockpit and in the Force itself. Kylo swallowed and stared at a star that it felt as if they were moving towards, but it was too far away in the galaxy to truly come close to in this way. His next word could barely be heard above the white noise of the engines, which was fine, because it was too close to begging for his comfort: " _Please_."

Somehow he must have fallen asleep because a proximity alarm pulled him back into reality what felt like only moments, but from the size of the planet filling his viewport he knew instantly had been the passage of hours. He pulled the throttle down on the ship and considered the planet in front of him. It was said there was no local life worth mentioning - the planet was hostile to most life, and so it had been used primarily as best as Kylo could tell from the data available to him, as a meeting place during Imperial days. Before that, it seemed it may have been settled by the Sith, but that had been millennia ago and it was not relevant today. 

What information could be accessed through the First Order's knowledge banks was sketchy, and even with his clearance codes, Kylo could find nothing that was going to offer a lot of guidance. The closest was that a fortress had been built in the southern hemisphere of the planet, and the coordinates were there, so Kylo placed them into the navigation system, and steered the shuttle towards the surface. 

As he pulled closer it was easy to see the patterns of clouds across the surface that settled hand in hand with the knowledge that the entire planet received a near constant set of storms around it. According to the databanks, this made it difficult to land on the surface of the planet, but that was something that Kylo did not intend to spend a lot of time worrying about. He had the ability to pilot _with_ the Force, and he could manage this. The storms held high winds and dangerous updrafts and currents, so passing down into the atmosphere was going to be the most dangerous part. 

He cleared the upper atmosphere and was headed towards the fortress when a sense of danger caused him to veer the shuttle up, just in time to miss a canon plasma blast veering beneath the shuttle. 

" _Kriff!_ " Kylo swore, and threw himself into the force in time to avoid another one, and yet another one, and to pull the entire shuttle back up into upper atmosphere. 

There were one of two possibilities it seemed, the first was that someone else had taken over after the Imperials, the second was that when the Imperials had left they had forgotten to turn off their automatic security. Either were possible, but neither was going to be fun to deal with. 

He pushed into the Force again, reaching as if on tip-toe deep into what he could feel, the streams of life and history and future and present in order to try to figure out which of the two possibilities he was dealing with. He couldn't be certain, but he couldn't feel anyone below. At least no one human, and probably no one sentient, although with alien species it was always difficult to know unless you were intimately acquainted with them. Probably then, he was dealing with automatic security, and Imperial class. 

He brought the shuttle back around to the appropriate vector and hung in the atmosphere for a moment considering options. After a moment, he opened an old Imperial channel and he began broadcasting one of the old codes that he knew. It was a code that had been held tightly to the chests of people like Hux's father, and Snoke, and was given out only to worthy individuals within the Order. Snoke had given it to Kylo, and he had tucked it away although he'd wondered if he would ever have need to use it. It might not save him now, but it couldn't hurt, he thought. 

That done, he pushed the course forward into the lower atmosphere. This time, with the open channel came a series of numbers pushing across his screen. They meant nothing to Kylo, but at least he wasn't being shot at. That was an improvement, if only he could keep it. 

He'd hit the lowest atmosphere without further ado when the speaker crackled and a calm female voice came over it. 

"Welcome to Bast Castle. Please transmit your authority clearance code." 

The voice might have belonged to a droid, but Kylo didn't know how to respond to it. He opened the channel with a frown and rattled off one of Snoke's clearances.

"Your clearance code does not check out. Please try again." 

Kylo swore and opened the channel again with a frown, trying another one of Snoke's clearance. 

"This is your final warning, please provide an accurate authority clearance code or prepare to receive fire from the Empire." 

Kylo considered. Without knowing exactly what the fire from the Empire would be it was difficult to know how much the ship would take without damage, but the nice thing about landing here was - there were possibly parts they might need. There was nothing he knew about this place other than what had been in the files and they had been sparse on detail. 

But that in and of itself told him something unique and that something it told him was that it had been likely a top-secret facility for which information about it was known only to the elite in the Empire, maybe even _the_ elite in the Empire. The woman's voice was in the process of another warning as Kylo pushed the speaker button aggressively. 

"Amidala." 

The word hung in the air as he held his breath, wondering if he was crazy. But the idea had come to him unprompted which made him think it was an instinct that could only be driven by the Force. 

It was both a surprise, and also somehow not one, when the voice responded in an equally calm manner: "Your authority clearance code has been accepted. Please land on docking pad two."

Kylo didn't have time to consider it too much. As he dropped through the atmosphere he began to hit the storms and he had to throw himself and every drop of ability he had in the Force into the task of staying alive long enough to take the relatively peaceful landing opportunity that he had been offered. 

The storms had a lot of electricity that seemed to be affecting some of his navigational equipment badly. There was a gripe in here about top of the line First Order equipment and him still having to work for a landing, but Kylo was practical enough to wait until he was on the ground to indulge himself with it. For all Hux griped about his rage fits, Kylo had never destroyed an essential panel - a fact that Hux ought to appreciate more than he did. 

An updraft caught the wing tips swirling him up again, almost into the upper atmosphere, and Kylo focused in on the ship, and using the Force to consider where the wind was going to leave him. He over compensated, dropping the shuttle into a spiral downwards, and then bringing her out steady on level eye with what appeared to be a large mountaintop fortress. The giant landing pad 2 that he had been offered could be seen and Kylo pushed his shuttle forward towards it, using every bit of skill to keep the shuttle flat and from bashing against the fortress itself. 

As he sat down on the docking pad a huge gust of wind came up and buffeted the entire ship. Kylo frowned, then breathed out again when docking clamps came up to catch the shuttle. He reached for the crash belt to find the droids and make a plan. 

_Good landing, kid._

The voice was so clear in his head that Kylo stopped and looked around the cockpit. There was no one with him, and when he did push on into the Force there was nobody there that he could feel - still. 

He whirled around, placing his back to the control panels and headed for the droids. 

There were two of them that worked strictly in mechanics, the other was a protocol droid with a significant baseline training in how ships work as well as its protocol training. 

"There is significant damage to the hyper drive core," the first of these droids spoke as Kylo came into the room. 

His brows furrowed together over his eyes. "What do you mean significant damage?" 

"It will take some time for repairs. We may need to replace parts."

Kylo didn't sigh, but he wanted to do so. He kinda also wanted to run his lightsaber through the droid, but it would do no good and would in fact do harm, so he pressed his lips together instead and glared at it. "Well, figure it out!" he snapped at the robot as he turned to go. It was irritating that Snoke would think that he had failed to reach his destination in time through no fault of Kylo's own.

"I have a commlink on me," he said, holding out the example of it to the droid. "You are not to go in or out. Do you understand?" 

"What about the parts sir?" 

Kylo didn't turn back around. "Why do you think I told you about the commlink?"

"The commlink will not fix the -"

"Sithspit," Kylo hissed between his teeth and turned back around. He gestured to the droid and then to himself. "You are to figure out the situation on the parts. I have a commlink. You can use said commlink to contact me and tell me what parts you need."

"Yes sir. Will do, sir" the second of the repair droids seemed to sense that perhaps Kylo wasn't pleased with them, but that was probably ascribing too much awareness to the pile of bolts and wiring. The first droid was nodding vigorously as Kylo glared at them both. 

He turned on his heel to return to his quarters. He found his mask and placed it over his head securely before he left the shuttle. 

The entrance ramp was down on the side opposite the storm, Kylo could feel that, but the storm still whipped around with a nasty edge. He pulled up his hood, tightened his fingers into a fist, and he pushed ahead towards the entrance of the building. It wasn't until he was clear of the ship that he stopped, standing buffeted by the winds and the storm, the rain that he could sense through the mask had a terrible smell to it. The wind was pushing him nearly off his feet, but he stood firm, a weight of familiarity settling over his shoulders like the weight of a much heavier cape. 

His vision: the nightmare that Hux had mocked him about, the quest that the Supreme Leader had denied him: This was that planet. 

The Force had been trying to guide him, or warn him, of simply wanted him here so badly that it was able to put something in his path to pull him in here. He was meant to be here, but the vision had shaken him so badly that he'd been unable to pull any deeper meaning from it. 

"If you were here I'd say 'I told you so'," he mused in the direction of Hux, but the words were lost into the wind almost before they could be heard. And anyway there wasn't time to privately boast to his… whatever Hux was… about his rightness and Hux's apparent wrongness. 

There had been a security system when he had landed, a security system he'd gotten lucky enough to make it around. But that didn't mean that there weren't other security systems or that they wouldn't require more from him. 

The wind teased at the cape, flapping it around his legs, and finally Kylo stopped trying to control it and let it go. The heavy fabric was buffeted by the wind as he moved forward across what resembled greatly an old Imperial landing platform. A roll of thunder startled him halfway across the platform and he looked up, lighting flashing horizontally across the sky, and he stared at it for a moment and then stepped forward again. 

He'd made it halfway to the entrance of the building before the rain started pouring without warning. Kylo cursed and picked up his pace, but by the time he'd reached the entrance of the fortress, he was soaked nearly clear through. If the cape had been around him instead of being blown back behind him, he might have maintained some pretense at dry fabric underneath, but as it was there was no hope for it. 

The fortress in front of him was made out of black stone, domed, from space it had looked almost as if it were a giant snail with a large tower pushed out from its back. Here, from a different perspective, it just felt like a giant stone hill rising in front of him. He stepped under the overhang, which would have put him into a dry cover had the wind not been blowing the rain horizontally. He stepped further in, nearly to the door and pulled the hood on the cloak down. 

He was grateful for the protection of his mask as he stepped up to the door. It ensured his head had remained dry despite the weather. The door itself was dark, steel probably, and definitely Imperial in design. 

"Please state the access code for entrance." 

The problem with machines was that you couldn't Jedi Mind trick them like you could humans. He could try the same over-ride code that had worked on the way in, but he wasn't certain it would work here. He pushed into the Force trying to find the lock mechanism as he had in Hux's room. If it was Imperial in design, then perhaps it would build off of the similar mechanisms they used on the _Finalizer_. 

To his surprise, the mechanism wasn't remotely similar, but it _was_ almost like the game puzzles he'd been given as a boy when he'd been studying his Uncle. He froze as he considered them. The puzzles had been a way of using the Force to see things that you couldn't see with your own eyes. It had meant using the Force to find the patterns and unlock the mechanisms, and this was not precisely the same - but it was close enough - it was so close that he took a step back and found himself once again in the pathway of the horizontal rain. 

Frowning he reached into the Force and began to follow the threads of the design through. It was a maze, and Kylo could find the edges of it and move forward. Patterns were difficult to find, but they were here, with putting this gear on the right, and the next on the left, and this would dead-end in a steel blockade while this one would allow them to move forward. 

He was sweating when the door in front of him creaked and slid open. 

The door was massive - larger than any door that Kylo had ever seen outside some of the government buildings of the Republic or a ship's bay on the _Finalizer_. Every inch of it covered with a dark blast plate, and as it cleared the space in front of him ahead of him Kylo moved forward cautiously, his senses extended for any further surprises or danger. Inside the door was a giant chamber larger than the audience chamber he and Hux had used to contact Snoke on Starkiller. In the center of this room was what had once been a statue, and as Kylo stepped forward, he froze in place as he began to recognize the pieces.

" _Vader._ " 

The words came through his mouth with barely a whisper, and Kylo stepped forward, the distraction of what he was seeing keeping his senses from fully being engaged on that which was around him. He felt like a drowned rat, but this place had belonged to his Grandfather. Suddenly everything felt as if it was humming. Whatever had happened with his shuttle - the outcome had meant to be this. He was intended to be here on this planet, in this fortress that surely must have held some import to his grandfather in one way or another. Kylo could feel it as surely as he could feel the heavy weight of wool around his ankles. 

"Grandfather," he said as he crouched down to touch what had been the bust of the statue at one point in time. The helmet could be seen, but it had been broken off in pieces throughout the intervening years of whenever this place had last been used by the Empire, and whatever it had become since then. The password suddenly made sense to him - his grandmother's name. Kylo knew enough, had pieced together enough of his grandfather's history through his ceaseless questioning of his Uncle and his mother, and through the explorations that Snoke had been generous enough to allow - perhaps even courage - to know that Anakin Skywalker had never stopped loving Padme Amidala. He had seen her through their children, and that love, _that weakness_ , had been his Grandfather's undoing. 

For a moment he sat, his gloved hand on the edge of what had been a stone approximation of his grandfather's helmet. This must have been a place his Grandfather frequented. It explained the password, it explained the sense of familiarity, and it explained the feel of his dream - he had dreamed of this place. More than that, it had been a vision, and something about this place was important. 

As he stood up, his head helpfully reminded him that Snoke hadn't thought so. He had given Kylo another mission, one he considered more important to the work of the First Order and to Kylo finishing his own training. 

But Snoke hadn't seen the vision he had seen. But Kylo had been wrong with his visions before. He couldn't always trust that what he saw was right, and there had been times before when Snoke had been right and Kylo wrong. 

There had been other times, a traitorous voice in his head reminded him, that Snoke had been wrong. 

Han Solo's death did not strengthen you.

Kylo stood up, his brow furrowing together in frustration as he surveyed the room for further information. The voice, ghost, memory, whatever it was, was not helpful as a reminder. What had happened on Starkiller could not be undone or redone, it could only be moved forward from. And that was what he was trying to do here. His vision was a piece of that, and Kylo was more certain of it now. It was perhaps less clear if it was leading him into greatness, or perhaps to his demise, but he was here and he could go nowhere else so long as the ship's hyperdrive was broken, so he had to make the best of it.

His stormy determination echoed in the set of his jaw, and he stood up, surveying the room for further information. 

It was cavernous, with a ceiling that arched far above Kylo's head, and his height was tall for most humans. It could have easily housed a rancor in height, and the beast would have still had plenty of room to reach his arms above his head. The ship might have fit in it, had there been doors and a bay to bring it in by. Inside, the rain and the wind was less - it could be heard, but it held distance as if it was no longer relevant to where they were. And perhaps it wasn't. 

"What secrets do you hold?" Kylo spoke into the darkness, raising his helmeted head up to survey the ceiling overhead. 

Off of the main room in multiple directions there were chambers and Kylo took his time walking about the room to check out each one. He was aware of the fact that the fortress had been protected, so it was possible the chambers within might have security as well, although it was unclear to him what that might be. Off to the left a hall swung down what appeared to be stone flights of steps. There were no rooms off of the hall that Kylo could see from the top without walking further down it, and so he left that one for now. 

A wider hallway to the right provided multiple doors off of it with at least the possibility of rooms that could be explored. Kylo lingered in the doorway. It was a wide hallway, and unlike the stairs that had been lit with glow-rods buried into the side of the wall, the hallway looked nice. Or at least, as if it had been at one point in time. It had been at least thirty years, Kylo realized, since his grandfather would have stepped foot in this place. Perhaps it had been longer than that. He turned back.

In front of him was the final option. This was through an archway that would have framed the statue of Vader at one point in time. There was nothing to be seen of this particular option. It was not well-lit, and it was not wide enough to pull in the light from the larger chamber. 

The question really was which one felt right, and Kylo stood between them, trying to make up his mind. In the back of his mind was the remembrance that whatever else he found in this place, he needed to try to find some mechanics to help repair the hyperdrive. But that also felt like a secondary task now. He was in what had been his grandfather's base? Fortress? Home? Which of these it was Kylo wasn't certain, but being here Kylo couldn't help but feel excited like he hadn't since he was a boy. It was a fresh sense of wanting to learn something, not because he had to, or he was afraid of what would happen if he didn't, but because - this was his grandfather's place, and kylo had the opportunity to learn more about him. This mattered. 

In the end, he chose the darker passageway through the arch behind the statue. It lacked light, but it made up for this in a sense of importance. It curved behind the archway and then again, and Kylo found himself wondering what felt like an impractically curved hallway. He lost track of how many s-curves he'd made as he wandered through. 

It wasn't until he reached a stairs that curved up in front of him that danger sense kicked in and he stopped straight in the hall. Something wasn't right, but there was nothing that he could sense. He pushed into the Force, looking for people, but finding none. That not done he dug into the mechanical aspects around him. He wasn't good at this, well not beyond unlocking the doors on Hux's quarters at any rate, but with that he found nothing abnormal. It was as he moved his foot that he realized what had stopped him in his tracks. The foot kicked several pebbles forward and they dropped down a cavern that he wasn't able to see. A cavern that he would have ended up in had he kept walking. 

He leaned forward, once again digging into the Force with a steely determination. This time he could see through the illusion, now that he knew it was there. The cavern was a pit, really, and it would have likely killed him. 

Kylo swallowed and looked around for the manual controls for the bridge, but there was nothing in the wall, no machinery - nothing that he could see or sense that would give him the opportunity to cross. He swore, and stepped back, turning around so he could stare back the direction he'd come. While he hadn't had any particular opinion about which direction he should go previously, now he was certain that there was something beyond this particular obstruction that needed to be seen. Why would it be protected thus if that was not the case? 

But he had to think about how his grandfather would have approached this - how he would have hidden the mechanism or - The answer seemed so stunningly obvious that Kylo stood for a moment loathing his inability to simply think well.

There was no mechanism. 

That was the answer, which might not solve the problem, but it would give him a way to move forward. His grandfather had used the Force as Kylo did. He would have known any number of ways to protect. Kylo had been places where it was the powers of the Jedi or the Sith or the Force user, if you wanted to be less specific about any of those things, and frequently the pass was not mechanics but was the Force. You had to be able to use the Force with a certain skill level in order to get pass the problem. 

He pressed his lips together under the helmet and considered options. He reached into the Force, reaching his hand out to gesture at the pit. The simplest answer would be that the bridge or mechanism to cross was already in existence, but obscured in some way to those who couldn't use the Force. 

Kylo could feel a curl of excitement in his chest as he looked at the expanse between him and the staircase in front of him. He'd spent time with his grandfather's holocron, he'd never expected that he would have a chance to use those teachings in this particular way. The feeling that he might be close to something important, to understanding his grandfather - maybe even to reconnecting with his grandfather in the Force - it was intense enough to be nearly tangible. Kylo reached his hand out towards the drop and reached out into the Force. 

What was he looking for? A bridge? Steps? Could something be moved? Or if he moved that something would it trigger a trap? But no, the answer to that question he suspected was no. If he could figure it out - then it wouldn't trigger a trap. It was only a danger if he moved forward without the Force and without the guidance he'd gotten from his grandfather in the past. 

In the stillness of the room, the utter focus of his own concentration, he could hear the sounds of the storm and it seemed as if it had gotten worse. He was momentarily grateful that he was inside the castle, not in the shuttle which would be pushed more by the wind on the high spire even with the docking clamps engaged. 

But that was not relevant to the objective in front of him. 

_Focus, Kylo._

The string of metal gears that ran up the side of the wall would have been invisible to anyone looking for a mechanism, and it took Kylo longer than he would have liked to find it. But when he did, the mechanics of it felt crystal clear: So clear that it was startling. 

Mechanics had never been clear. Every working session with Han Solo had been an instrument of torture and Ben Solo had frequently messed the project up, which had required him to be subjected to frustrated grumbling from the elder man. Kylo pushed the memories away. They were old memories anyway, the reality of trying to bond that way with his son had died out after there had been a realization that the improvement was weak and the interest weaker still. Nothing else had risen to replace it. 

This felt more like art than the statue in the front entrance hall, and Kylo reached out to pull out the lever from the gear and to watch them start up. They were small, none of them larger than the size of Kylo's fingernail, and they crept up inside the wall, all the way up, until they stopped in a mass of other machinery that Kylo was pretty certain didn't have to have anything done to them for this to work. All of this work was quieter than he had expected until the real movement begin, and in front of him across the chamber came a durasteel bridge, crisscrossing the large cavern and filling in the empty space. 

As it clanged together, Kylo stared down at it, and with an atypical grin he put a toe on it gingerly, as he had touched his toe to the top of a Naboo lake once when he was a child. When it held, he strode across it and looked up the stairs. 

It was a spiral staircase leading up into one of the spires of the tower and as Kylo started climbing the sounds from outside were less deadened by the walls of the fortress and could be heard more clearly. The stairs weren't narrow, but they were fairly steep and had he in worse shape he would have likely been breathing heavily by the time he climbed a couple of rotations. 

As it was, he was buoyed upward by the anticipation of the unknown. This was as atypical as the smile had been. The unknown and uncertainty was typically something to be dreaded, not embraced. He prefered certainty, control, and knowing how things would turn out and that if they turned out poorly, that he could rectify it. There was none of this feeling here - and he couldn't explain that. He had no idea what he was going to find in this castle, only the sense that whatever it is would be valuable to him, perhaps some belonging. 

This had been his grandfather's fortress, it was as close as he would ever get to going to his grandfather's home. Maybe when he had passed all of his tests, and when the First Order had succeeded as Snoke said it would do, this could become Kylo's fortress. It was damaged and vast, but the structure seemed largely sound, and Kylo could change it for the better. The statue in the center could be repaired, and perhaps Kylo would have one commissioned for himself as well. He and his grandfather could stand side-by-side, two generations of saviours for the galaxy. Yes, his grandfather had ultimately failed, but it could not undo everything that he had been able to do that was positive. And Kylo would do better than he had done - learn from his mistakes - move forward and the galaxy would be better off for that. 

There would no longer be the uncertainty and fear of controlled power that his mother held so strongly. No Jedi, with their pathetic weaknesses, and no Sith, with their blind spots, just the Force - and Kylo would be the balance point holding the galaxy in place. He would make his grandfather proud, and he could live in this place where his grandfather had made his home, and everything that had brought him to that moment would be worth it. 

Deep in thought, he reached the top of the stairs before he realized just how far he had climbed. In front of him was only a single door. It was rounded at the edges, simple, and yet elegant. It gave the impression of belonging in an Ancient Coruscant bank vault rather than a castle on an otherwise uninhabited planet. For an instant Kylo had a flash of an old holofilm he'd watched as a child. A smuggler that had traveled the galaxy looking for treasure and finding it in the most unrealistic of ways, with daring feats, and questionable mythology - it was not a particularly pleasant memory and he buried it as he reached forward to touch the door. 

If he had been expecting it to push open with his touch, he was disappointed. Much like the old smuggler hero, it had not been this simple. Thankfully, unlike the smuggler hero, it also didn't seem to have triggered any traps. There didn't appear to be any obvious panel on this, again, and Kylo stared at it for a moment questioning how to get into the room and whether it was necessary. But necessary was not what was guiding his motions at this point in time. He was moving on instinct and feeling and instinct told him this was the door he wanted to open. 

Kylo reached into the Force once again, as he had with the pit below at the beginning of the stairs. It was clear to him that this place had been particularly his Grandfather's. No one would have been able to get here except that they were accompanied by a Force user - probably Darth Vader himself - and so the answer to the question he sought lay there. He visualized the door opening. It seemed almost too simple, but he pictured it in his head, and directed that focus at the door itself. As he did, the door slid open with a woosh, and Kylo blinked. 

"Just like opening a door with a panel," he murmured impressed despite himself. No one would be able to do it without the Force, but for a Force user, it was… simple. 

Kylo stepped into the room feeling inadequate as he did so. He would have never thought of something like that, would have considered it a ridiculous aspect of his Uncle's training to even think of coming up with something like that. He liked to believe that he was very much like his grandfather, but part of him was wondering if his grandfather had not been more mechanically minded than Kylo himself was -- more like Han Solo -- and this notion sat uncomfortably against his heart. 

The chamber he entered was dark, a glossy black tile set into the floor and walls at every juncture, moving up those walls to a domed ceiling overhead. He had to be in the top of the tower, the one that he'd seen from the outside, and this space - this had been his grandfather's room within this fortress. Benches were built into the wall, set every so often around the room. The room itself had very little in the way of furniture other than this, but in the center sat one of his grandfather's meditation chambers, with the necessary machinery that would have been required to keep him alive after the Jedi's betrayal of him. 

Kylo had been many places in his quest for learning more about his grandfather. Many of those places had been places that Snoke had sent him to specifically. But never had he been in a room that had been his Grandfather's. Those places no longer existed anywhere. The ships that his grandfather had commanded had been lost long ago. The small fortresses and Imperial hideouts on the Outer Rim destroyed or taken over by the Republic, and besides those had not been his grandfather's specifically. The places on Coruscant where he may have resided when in Imperial City, those were gone as well. But somehow this fortress had survived. 

He stepped forward into the room turning in it fully. It was the first time that this room had seen Vader's blood in who knew how many decades. Kylo straightened his shoulders and stepped to the meditation chamber. Did it still work, he wondered, running a gloved hand over the controls. Did it hold any memory of his grandfather in the place? 

He reached up, removed his helmet and walked across to sit it down on one of the benches as he regarded the chamber with interest. Returning to the control panel he considered the wires and tubes that were connected into the base of the chamber. These would have been hooked to his grandfather, but they might no longer work, or might not be necessary any more. He leaned over the edge and looked up into the center of what had once been the inside of the chamber. Would it come down and work still? Thus far it seemed all of the other mechanics in the castle were still working from the doors, to the glowrods. They were in surprisingly good repair when one considered how long they would have been without maintenance. Kylo wondered if there were still running repair droids roaming through the fortress even if he hadn't yet stumbled across one. 

He looked at the panel, pushed a couple of buttons that seemed promising and found instead of activating the chamber, he had instead activated a hologram. It was a silent one, the sort that people enjoyed to keep of family members and friends that they could not have near. And as Kylo stared at it he realized that he recognized the man, boy really, in the holo. Jedi Luke Skywalker, but so much younger than Kylo had ever known him, more like the man he had seen in holos talking about heroes of the Republic. If Vader had kept this holo, surely it had been without the Emperor's knowledge. It had been the beginnings of what would be his personal downfall - the beginnings of putting his personal attachments before the good of the galaxy. 

Kylo's lips twisted in frustration and he turned off the holo staring into the now empty space it had occupied. The twist of feeling inadequate and unable to control himself was there, rising like bile in the back of his throat. It was a feeling that had nearly overtaken him after killing Han Solo, and not unlike the feeling of despair after he had fought this supposed brother, and it frightened him like nothing else had been able to do recently. And the fact that it kept coming back, rising up like a weed that could not be fully destroyed only made it worse. 

He pulled in a deep breath and straightened his shoulders again, pushing the fear down into a place where it could be melted into strength. That was the difference between who he had once been and who he was now. His fear could be forged in the fires of anger, and he would emerge stronger for the tempering under that pressure, rather than weakened and wanting. He would be stronger, not weaker. That was the destiny he was following. And if he was here to learn about his grandfather - he was here to learn about his mistakes as well, to not follow in his grandfather's footsteps as he moved forward - then this was a part of that. To understand would be to move forward with that knowledge rather than in utter ignorance. 

Another button pushed brought the top of the chamber down. It started with a creaking sound that made Kylo wonder if it would work after all, but then it did, closing the chamber into what would be an absolutely impenetrable place to seek the Force. A smile pushed to his lips and he reversed the mechanism, as he turned his attention back to the door into the chamber. It was closed using the Force with the same simple focus that he had provided it to open the door in the first place. Leaving his helmet on the bench, Kylo climbed into the chamber, activating the controls to bring it down over him. 

Extra air was coming from one of the tubes, but there was no danger in the extra, it was simply unnecessary strictly speaking as Kylo could breathe on his own without further apparatus. As it settled around him, he reached into the Force on his own. Meditation had been something that he hadn't felt good at, and sometimes he still wondered if he was doing it right. That had so frequently been the fear that he'd had about what he was doing: that he wasn't doing it right. 

This fear of failure was a fear that had been used by his Uncle and his mother to control him, but it was a fear he had largely given up when he had gone to Snoke. Snoke was clearer about when Kylo had fucked up. He was also clearer about his praise, and better at letting Kylo know when he was doing something that would lead him towards fulfilling his destiny. Snoke was not an easy master, and there were things that Kylo hated, the lack of privacy and the feeling that he couldn't direct his own destiny, but he knew that these things would be given to him when Snoke had determined he was ready to do it himself. 

Or possibly he would take them. 

Right or not, Kylo could find the flow of the Force in this space. As he stretched outward he could feel rather than see the calm space of the room surrounding him. The cool lifelessness of the black tiles, and then the sturdy stone of the fortress bleeding into the restless energy of the storm surrounding him, and from there further, more abstract. Life - here on this planet or elsewhere, it as less clear. Visions had a murky quality and always had even when he was a child that had been woken by nightmares he didn't understand to be comforted by parents who couldn't see what he was experiencing. This was no difference, a Force around him that could be past or future, might be fixed, or could be movable. 

Kylo sought the familiar presence of his grandfather that he had found in the holocron before. It was there, but like a shadow that moved out just out of his line of sight, always _just_ out of his line of sight. He pushed further and found himself face to face with the boy he had fought. 

" _Don't be defined by your ghosts._ " 

He wanted to lunge at him, but the motion was interrupted by the persistent beeping of a commlink pulling him out of the vision, or the meditation, or whatever it was and into the chamber again. Kylo opened his eyes, pulling himself back to the present moment, frustrated he had been unable to find his grandfather here - in what had been his own place. 

"Yes?" He snapped at the commlink. 

"Yes sir, we have discovered the problem with the hyperdrive." 

"And?" 

"We have a 97.643% chance of repairing it properly without any new parts."

"Then why are you bothering me?" 

"You wished an update sir," the droid sounded nonplussed. 

"Good, fine. Do." Kylo commanded it. 

"There's something else, sir." 

"What?" Kylo kept the anger between his lips, but just barely, the words pushed out in an irritated hiss. 

"There is an incoming ship to the system sir. We thought you should be aware." 

"What ship?" 

"A yacht sir. Should we hail it?" 

The vision of his brother held in his mind and the feeling that perhaps it had meant something settled. He moved out of the chamber and raised the commlink to his lips.

"No. In fact power down. I don't want them knowing we're here." 

"But, sir the repairs." 

Kylo tightened a fist, his fingers pressing against his palms. "Can you do them with minimum power?" 

"I believe so sir."

"Then proceed at minimum power. And be prepared for company."


	8. Rey

"Don't ignore your instincts." 

Rey nodded as she pressed forward with her lightsaber against the other woman. 

Mara Jade had offered to provide her with an opportunity to practice some of the lightsaber skills that she had begun working with Luke. The nice thing about working with a lightsaber was that it was so like working with her staff on Jakku. Some of the movements were similar, it was an extension of her own body, and Luke had commented on how her familiarity with the staff and movements you could make with it was helping her. But it could also hurt her as well - for one thing the lightsaber wasn't so long as a staff and sometimes Rey thought this was the thing that threw her most. She had to compensate for being used to having another end to throw up in an opponent's face. She couldn't count on it and she had to think around it. 

Mara fought differently than Luke did - there was more aggression to it. In that way it reminded her of Kylo Ren, or in some ways even of Anakin. But there was more grace to it as well. It was almost as if someone had taken Kylo Ren and Luke and blended them into one person and presented their lightsaber combat for study. This was helpful though, much as it had been helpful to her to study with Anakin. She had to think differently, respond differently, and she couldn't rely too much on the known or what she had seen; she had to dig more deeply into the Force and provide a defense against what Mara was pushing towards her. 

Mara thrust forward with her lightsaber and Rey parried, using the momentum to swing to the side and out of the initial path of Mara's lightsaber. Mara seemed pleased by this and she took a step back, powering down the violet blade and attaching it to her belt in a signalling that at least this part of the practice was coming to a close. 

"What if your instincts are wrong," Rey asked as Mara she followed the older woman's lead and powered down her own lightsaber. Unlike Mara though, she didn't reattach it to her belt, but instead held it in her hand. The weapon had clearly seen time, and sometimes she wondered how much time it had seen. 

"May I?" 

The question rather than an answer wasn't an entire surprise to Rey. Mara seemed to have a knack for answering questions with another question, although usually they had more to do with the topic at hand. Rey shrugged and handed the weapon over to Mara. 

Mara took it in her hands, examined the hilt and then ignited the blade. The pale blue shot up into the storage hold where they were training and cast shadows over the storage that was there. The hum of the blade competed with the ship's engines, and Mara looked at it for a moment and then moved it back and forth in her hands, completing a simple drill not unlike some of the ones that Rey had known. Rey watched her, curiosity growing as what Mara was doing seemed to have absolutely no pertinence to the question that she had asked. Finally Mara powered down the weapon and examined the hilt once more. 

"There's some rust here around the rim," she noted. "You should probably see if you can clean that before it becomes worse. I suspect it's from the years of disuse with Maz." 

"You know Maz?" Rey's brow furrowed. But maybe she shouldn't have been surprised by this. Han Solo, her father, had known Maz, and it seemed very likely that Mara Jade might run in the circles that would know the watering holes of the galaxy. 

"I gave the lightsaber to Maz for safe keeping," Mara remarked as she handed the hilt back over to Rey. Rey must have looked as astonished by this disclosure as she felt, for Mara's lips pressed together in a smirk. "I carried this lightsaber for a time, before I made my own." 

Rey took the weapon back and looked at the hilt, noting the rust damage that Mara had pointed out to her. It wasn't that bad, and Rey felt less embarrassed for having not noticed it before, but it was further confirmation of Rey's own observation that Mara was very good at observation. Leia had said that she dealt with information. It was a career that felt as if it required observation if you were going to be good at it and Rey believed Mara was very good at it. 

"I thought it was Anakin Skywalker's lightsaber. When did you carry it?" Rey took this moment to attach the lightsaber to her belt once again and she followed Mara across to a small bench near the edge of the cargo hold. 

"A long time ago," Mara said, and the smirk on her lips unwound into a small smile. "When I first met Luke, your Uncle, I didn't have one and I didn't have the knowledge to make my own. That had not been a part of my original lessons. The lightsaber I used back when the Empire was still active and living, was not one I had made myself but one that had been made for me and trained with me throughout that time. I had lost it when the Empire was lost, and I didn't carry one for many years. I came across this one by chance, on part of a mission that I was completing with your Uncle. I carried it for that mission, and offered it back to him, but he told me to keep it." 

"Why? It was his father's, why would he not want to keep it himself?" 

Mara considered this. "I don't know for certain. He never said, but I think it was his way of encouraging me to become a Jedi." 

"Are you a Jedi?" 

This was a question that Rey had been wanting to ask almost from the first moment that Mara walked onto the ship. Perhaps some part of her recognized that Mara was fiercely independent, self-sufficient, someone who ruled her own life and made decisions for herself. And sometimes Rey wondered whether the decision to be trained was _hers_ or if it was being pressed upon her from outside forces - Leia, Luke, the entire situation with Kylo Ren. 

Mara didn't answer this at first, and Rey wondered if she was going to answer it with another question when she finally did answer it. It was a personal question and Mara had mostly avoided answering many of those. Rey looked over to check out the profile of the other woman. Her face gave away nothing at all, which was a feat in and of itself. Rey felt like her face was incredibly expressive in comparison. And it wasn't as if she hadn't seen the benefit to being able to keep your face unemotional and giving nothing away, she had around the watering holes on Jakku, but largely she'd had to learn to survive in other ways. 

"Yes, and no," Mara finally said. "I have training in using the Force. I've trained with Jedi, and I've even done a bit of training of students who would go on to be Jedi, but I don't know that I would consider myself a Jedi exactly. The Force is big, and it's much more than what the Jedi understand. When the young Jedi were destroyed I think I simply put to the side any notion that I would be that, exactly. Your Uncle and I had differing opinions on that matter, but differing opinions are typical with us." 

Rey considered this in silence. "How do you know him?" 

"It's a long story," Mara deferred gently. "But I'm glad that you found him. We all worried that you had been lost forever. Do you remember what happened?" 

"Not entirely. Master Skywalker says that as I get stronger and more focused in the Force that I may be able to remember it. Or perhaps we'll never know. He knows that it was someone who was strong in the Force because they were able to bury my memories of my previous life deeply enough that I couldn't find them again," Rey knew that she was fortunate to have memories of her family again and to know who they were. Finn didn't have that, but it was sometimes frustrating that she didn't know how she had come to be on Jakku outside of the obvious 'she had been kidnapped'. 

"I may never know," she admitted with a small shrug. "I'll have to be content with not knowing why I was kidnapped or left other than, my mother was who she was and we were Force sensitive." 

Mara nodded and didn't pursue the line of thought further. Rey was glad as the idea of trying to get stronger and focus was something that she was still uncertain about. Even as she trained, she had to admit there was a part of her that wondered if it was the best idea after watching Kylo Ren do what he had done, what he had tried to do. Despite her abilities, most of her life had been lived believing that the Jedi were only something of legend and myth. Nothing in her life had prepared her for the possibility that she might also be one of those legends, and Rey didn't feel much like a legend. 

But she had watched her Uncle as he had begun to train her, and much of their training had consisted largely of him taking her questions and turning them over and returning his ideas back to her in his own quiet way, usually with a few questions of his own. Jedi training had been a fair amount of lightsaber sparring, as she had expected, but much of it felt as if it had been only talking and Rey had wondered if she was doing anything at all. 

Anakin felt different from her Uncle, and he was the only other Jedi that she'd really met. Especially as it seemed that Mara didn't consider herself one. Anakin felt more focused, more proactive, and more likely to set off on a whim or instinct, something that Rey wasn't certain she approved of entirely, but could respect and understand. In that way, he reminded her of Han Solo, their father, Anakin just moved forward, and he didn't really stop to ask whether it could be done, he just assumed it could be and did it. 

Anakin made her believe that it might not be so bad to be a Jedi after all. That the power she could weld didn't have to be used to ask questions endlessly, or control people, but could be used to serve wherever it seemed like life was leading her to serve. 

Why couldn't Ben have been like that? Like Anakin? A Jedi who she could train with and learn from and believe in? He had been on that road, according to everyone that she had talked to. Her mother believed he could still be on that road, and her Uncle, well she was less certain her Uncle believed it still. Confoundingly, Anakin seemed to believe it, and he had only met him once, fought him, and came away from it still convinced that there was a way to reach Ben Solo under the shadow of the grandfather he wanted to become. 

"Do you think it's possible that Kylo Ren is still Ben? Do you think it's possible he can come home?" Rey blurted the question out and it hung for a moment in the stillness of the cargo bay and when she turned to look at Mara, Mara wasn't looking at her, but was instead staring into the emptiness of the space in front of her. 

"Ben may be the only person who can answer that for certain. You ask if it's possible, yes, I think it may be possible. Vader did, after all, when he was given reason to do so, and if there is one thing I believe about Skywalkers, it is that you may have the tendency to make foolish choices, but you also have the resilience and courage to come back from them. Kylo Ren, Ben, whatever you wish to call him - he has the possibility of that choice." 

"But he's used the Force in horrible ways," Rey protested. The feeling of numb loss watching Han Solo fall in Starkiller base had crystallized into something hard in her chest as she'd fought Kylo Ren in the snow afterwards. It had melted away a little as she'd remembered the Force, as she'd stepped away from him and not drawn a blade across his neck as part of her had been tempted to do, but it was not gone completely. "He's killed villages, and invaded people's minds, and he killed -" 

"He killed his father," Mara said matter-of-factly. "How do you begin to come back from that?" 

"Exactly," Rey's throat felt dry, and the word formed with difficulty. 

"You're still angry with him," Mara turned cool green eyes to look at Rey and Rey felt as if she might be being read by Mara, perhaps less in the Force and more the reading of someone who knew human beings very well. "That's understandable." 

"He had everything I didn't. Dad, Mom, and growing up, and Uncle Luke, and the training, the knowledge of who he was, and who he could be, and that he had family, and he just threw it away." 

"For you to forgive him, you will need to grieve what you lost, but also the possibility of what might have been. Grieve it, Rey. You will never get that life back; it is lost to you forever. But if you can put that behind you, then you might gain something more. Something that in its own way will be beautiful, because of the position in which it has been placed. Perhaps something that is better than what you might have had, regardless of that context - but you can't discover that, without the grieving." 

Tears smarted at the edges of Rey's eyes. The not so pleasant truth was that she didn't want to forgive Kylo Ren for killing her father. She didn't want him to feel that it was okay, because it hadn't been okay. It never would be okay. With Han she'd begun to get a picture of a life that could not involve Jakku. It was a life that hadn't even involved her family - or so she'd thought - but that she could still find good. And Kylo Ren had ripped it out from under her. 

But beyond that even, there was the realization that this was her brother, and that he'd known precisely who Han Solo was. If it was an act she couldn't comprehend, not knowing who he was, then how was it an act that her brother could comprehend while knowing? And how could she forgive him that lack? 

"You want your family to be one thing," Mara said, and her words weren't unkind, for all they were direct. "You've dreamed about who they were, and when they were coming for you. Those dreams have shaped your hopes and expectations. And you don't need to lose that hope today because of who your father was, or who your mother is, or who your brother is, but your expectations must shift and inform a new hope. If you cling too tightly to the past, you lose the future and believe me I have some experience with that. I think your mother does as well." 

Rey wasn't certain she understood exactly what Mara was saying, but she could understand at least about the expectations. She'd thought her father was a X-wing pilot maybe, or her mother a war hero. She'd dreamed of a misunderstanding where they'd return and take her home. Mostly those dreams had never involved siblings, but sometimes they had, but they'd always been siblings that were instant best friends, born to welcome her into their midst and ready to invite her to be a part of them. They'd been Finn, and Anakin, really. Not Kylo Ren. 

"What if I can't hope that he comes home?" She asked hesitantly, half afraid it marked her as a bad person. "What if I want him to pay for what he's done to our family?" 

Mara turned to look at her, and her eyebrow raised wryly. "Then I would say, congratulations, Rey, you are human." She waited and then reached over and gently covered Rey's hand with her own. "When I worked for the Empire I was led to believe things were true, when they weren't. I cannot excuse my actions during that time with that knowledge. I can honestly say that I tried as best as I could to serve justice and to be fair, but I know that sometimes I was working inside a system that was not fair and was given information that led me to come to incorrect inclusions. When I came outside of it, I was angry at your Uncle - along with a few others - for the destruction of the Empire, but particularly your Uncle. I grieved the life I had once upon a time considered my right, and as I did so I came to understand that what I had known and believed absolutely was wrong.

"I'm not certain that we can offer your brother that same generosity. That said, I do believe he has been twisted, and something that has been twisted can be untwisted, even if it may always bear the scars of that twisting. Your mother, your brother up there in the cockpit," she inclined her head towards it. "They believe this. It is acceptable to let them believe it for you as you grieve what might have been in another lifetime. Eventually though, you will have to move on and leave the grief behind." 

As if on cue, Anakin's voice came through the ship's speaker system. "We've hit the Vjun system, and we're getting ready to look for a place to land." 

Rey reached for her commlink as she jumped to her feet. "I'll be right up," she put her shoulders back and shook her head and looked down at Mara. "Thank you," she offered. "For the training, and the other." 

Anakin, Chewie, and Finn were already in the cockpit when Rey got there. Anakin was in the pilot's seat and Chewie in the co-pilot's seat, while Finn lurked behind looking a little nervous. 

"There's a major storm going through the surface," Anakin said, as he moved to stand up. 

"No," Rey put her hand on his shoulder. "You're in the pilot's seat right now." 

He looked back at her startled and she looked at the planet in the viewport in front of them. "You just said there's a major storm, right? And you said before that it made it difficult to land when you were here in your timeline, that you couldn't have done it without the Jedi Master with you-"

"Well, yeah, but that was a very different ship than this one. Master Tionne was fantastic, but her ship was older than this one."

"So it was actual garbage is what you're saying then?" Finn chipped in. 

Chewie roared his protest of this assessment of the _Falcon_ and both Rey and Anakin turned to look at him. 

"Hey," Finn held both hands up. "Her words not mine." 

"Never mind that now," Rey rolled her eyes affectionately as she looked back to Anakin. "You've been here, you've seen the system before, and the _Falcon_ may be able to better maneuver the storms than your Master Tionne's ship was able to, but the fact remains that I haven't flown it, and that despite all the sim hours I put in, and the the flying I've done with Chewie, you're the more experienced pilot. I want you there for now. Captain's orders." 

"All right, Captain," Anakin raised an eyebrow, but he grinned. "Which I think leads us to the question of the hour: Where are we going to land? We've got the castle, which we know about - it's here," he pulled up the map in front of them. "Or do we look for the Jedi temple that Zayna said she thought was on the planet." 

"Do we have any idea where this Jedi temple may be?" Finn asked, leaning forward to take in the map of the planet. 

"Not really," Anakin sighed as he considered it. "It's a large planet and we don't know that much, but Zayna believes there was one here." 

"Why are we here?" Rey asked him. "What's your instinct telling you? Are we here to visit the fortress, the one that was Vader's? Or are we here to visit the Temple?" 

Anakin's face screwed up slightly and finally he said: "My dream was about the castle. It took place on the steps we climbed up to the castle. It was Tahiri and I, and someone else was there, just out of sight."

"That's not ominous or anything," Finn sighed from Rey's side. 

"I think we go to the Fortress then," she looked between the other three. "Don't you think? If the vision was there, then we go there."

"But it might just have been trying to pull me back to _this_ planet and this location," Anakin pointed out. "It might not have been about Vader's fortress at all." 

"Are visions always this obtuse?" Rey asked dryly, even though she suspected that she knew the answer to this question. Her own experience with Force visions had been more than obtuse. It had been terrifying. It had frightened her off of picking up the lightsaber or using the Force at all, even with Maz's encouragement. If she hadn't had to pick it up to protect Finn and herself from her brother, would she have ever wanted it? 

_Your mother didn't,_ a voice reminded her. 

And that didn't feel quite right either, when she thought about it. It was a part of her and it shouldn't be ignored. Perhaps it even felt sometimes as if it had chosen her. 

Anakin hadn't responded to her question and so she wrinkled up her nose and considered. When she had trained with Luke he had told her maddening things like 'when you are at peace, you will know the right answer'. It was maddening in part because Rey felt like the times when things had been the most clear had frequently not been at times of peace for her. She'd known she had to fly the _Falcon_ and how to try a crazy maneuver because she was being shot at by the First Order. She'd known that she had to use the Force when she was being attacked by her brother. But then again, maybe there had been kind of a peace in that moment. It had less to do with the moment itself, which was full of danger and violence and emotion, and more to do with knowing what she could do, and knowing that she had to do it. The peace had not been external, it had been internal - she had known, and so she had moved forward. 

"The Fortress," she said to Anakin, but there was certainty in her voice this time around. Enough so that Anakin nodded and started punching in the coordinates for the castle. 

"You sure about this? What if there's something important at the temple?" Finn asked her. 

"I'm sure," she said. "The Fortress is important - maybe just because I need to find something there or Anakin needs to find something there - but it's important. So we start there and we see where the Force guides us." 

She looked back up at Anakin who was piloting. There was a smile on his lips as his hands moved expertly over the control of the Falcon.

"That was spoken like a true Jedi," he turned back around to flash her a grin that reminded her for a moment of Han's. "It makes me feel like I'm home." 

Chewie roared a warning about the upcoming atmosphere, and Anakin turned back. 

"You all better put your crash belts on," he turned serious. "Chewie's right about the storm, and I recall a really bumpy ride going down. This whole place has storms constantly, and the _Falcon_ 's a better ship than Tionne's, but it's still going to be a challenge, and it's likely to get bumpy. 

Rey sat back and locked in as Finn did the same, but she kept her eyes on the viewport in front of them, or alternatively on Anakin's hands, somewhat second guessing her decision to let him do the piloting. It had made sense at the time, and she knew - she could feel? - that he'd piloted the ship before, and that he missed doing so. But he hadn't asked, and if anything he'd treated her with a deference that she had never had given to her before. It was like he knew that their father had given her the _Falcon_ and he wasn't going to ask for any part of it. 

Considering it was the one thing she really had of her father's, Rey had to admit, perhaps a little selfishly, that she was glad he hadn't, but her decision now had been based in logic. He was the more experienced pilot when it came to real life situations.

Anakin focused in, giving suggestions to Chewbacca every few moments, while watching controls. It was a curious mixture of allowing autopilot to take on some things while he controlled others by hand. They were things that Rey might have let the autopilot control, and she vowed when this was all over, to ask him about that, the whys of the decisions he'd made. Assuming, of course, that he didn't crash land them.

They were through the upper atmosphere when the ship bucked strongly, and Finn let out what Rey was pretty certain was a First Order curse. 

She looked up at Anakin, but he'd reached for the stabilizer control to compensate, and his brows were furrowed as he focused possibly even beyond the controls of the ship. Rey grasped the arms of her chair and grit her own teeth as they settled into the lower atmosphere. An electric charge of lightning nearby made a panel light up and she couldn't keep the words from springing to her lips. 

"Anakin, the exhilarary -"

"Yeah, got it," he said, reaching over to flip a switch. "Chewie can you take the stabilizers while I match the coordinates." 

Chewie took them, and while the ship still rocked in the wind, Anakin dipped lower towards the ground and the ship rocked less. But flying lower meant that they were closer to the many mountains and canyons on the surface in visibility that was terrible. Rey knew Anakin was using the Force, but she half wished it was her using the Force. She'd be able to fly it and this part she was certain she could fly as well as Anakin, and it would be far less nerve-wracking than watching someone else fly it. 

She closed her eyes and scolded herself for not trusting her brother, who was clearly capable, and sat back, but her knuckles still felt tight against the arm of the chair. 

"That's it," Finn said suddenly from beside her, and she reopened them and leaned forward to see what almost appeared to be a beetle perched on top of a spire. 

"Yep," Anakin brought the _Falcon_ in lower, suddenly, enough of a drop that Rey was certain her stomach had been left up above for an instant and was going to need to catch up. 

"The landing platform is up there," Finn pointed out. 

"Yeah, it is," Anakin nodded. "But there's a good chance that the missile defenses are up there too and I'd rather not alert them, unless you want to?" 

"Where are we headed then?" Rey leaned forward now, her eyes still on the fortress in front of her with a sense of not knowing exactly what to feel. 

"There's a back landing pad, and there are stairs that go up, it'll take us longer, but I think it's the best way to go in." 

"Wait, we're climbing to the top?" Finn looked at Anakin in disbelief. "In this weather?"

"Unless you want to try the landing platform?" Anakin looked back at Rey. 

"Was it armed when you were here before?" 

"Yeah," Anakin shrugged. "There's a docking bay too, but that would have to be opened from the inside." 

"Then we climb," Rey said. "I hope it's not too far." 

Anakin shrugged, and there was a quick grin. "If eleven year old me can figure it out, we can manage it." 

Finn huffed beside her and she turned to look at give him a cheeky grin. "Come on, big deal, it'll be a piece of cake next to Starkiller and we survived that."

Having gotten through the atmosphere, and the weather on the planet's surface, landing was a surprisingly simple affair. At the base there seemed to be what might have been a service platform at one time, although Rey had a difficult time imagining that anyone would have used it for very long - it was too far up to the fortress from here. As Anakin pulled out the landing gear, and he and Chewie cross-checked systems, Mara joined them in the cockpit. 

"It's going to be a bit of a hike," she said raising her eyebrow at Anakin. 

He turned around and nodded. "It's going to be a really long hike, but everything in Zayna's data suggests that there's a good possibility that things are still operational, and I don't really want to be blown out of the sky. 

"Then we should get prepared for that hike, and take supplies with us," Mara nodded. "I'll work on getting the packs out." 

Rey, Finn, Anakin, and Chewie joined her in the main bay as soon the landing had settled. Each of them took a small pack with supplies, protein bars and basic survival equipment, Anakin attached his lightsaber to his belt, but, like Mara, he packed a blaster as well. The DL-44 on his hip reminded Rey so painfully of their father, that she had to look to her own packing again. Her own pack was light, but held an impressive amount of things, and she also packed the lightsaber she had carried, but the blaster that her father had given her. Both things were secured, and then came the rain gear. 

Mara handed out poncho style wraps for each of them. "They're a waterproof fabric, that will keep you at least a bit drier, but also should help with warmth. It looks like it's going to be a wet hike."

"We don't just have to climb a bunch of steps, we have to do it in the wet," Finn grumbled. "It's like some sort of hell that Phasma would have come up with for us or something." 

Anakin shook his head. "It's not going to be fun, I'll tell you that, but on the bright side when we get to the top, just consider the view."

Rey slid her own poncho over her head. Similar to the wraps she'd worn on Jakku to keep the sand out of her ears and mouth it lacked the goggles. But in the rain goggles would simply get streaked with the moisture and her eyes would do better right now. The poncho had enough of a hood that so long as she wasn't looking up, it would help keep the rain out of her face. 

Annoyingly it was going to also restrict her vision which was something that Rey couldn't say she was wild about, but as they started climbing she realized suddenly that it didn't matter - the only place she needed to look was down. 

Anakin hadn't been wrong about it not being fun. The steps wound around the mountain on the edge, reminding Rey quite a bit of the steps she had climbed when she had first found her Uncle on Ahch-To. They were narrow and steep, but unlike those on Ahch-To, these were not accompanied by a beautiful blue sky and light breeze. No, these were accompanied by harsh acidic rain, dark clouds stewing above them, lightning - that thankfully seemed to stay a distance from them - and thunderclaps that vibrated the ground underneath her feet. 

Rey gritted her teeth and kept moving forward. Anakin had taken point at the front, Mara was bringing up the rear, and that left Rey, then Finn, then Chewie in the center of the line. She pressed forward just a bit to catch up to Anakin. 

"How long is this?" She called forward as the rain broke just enough to be more of a drizzle than a true storm. 

"Anakin looked back, and shook his head. "I remember that it felt like forever when it was Tahiri and I. But I was also eleven," he shrugged. "I'd seen less and had to put up with a lot less at that point." He paused and then added. "That probably wasn't a bad thing. If the war had come when I was younger - I don't know how I would have handled it."

Rey knew that there was a huge war in Anakin's galaxy. He'd told her enough about the Yuuzhan Vong for her to understand that there was a threat in that galaxy that might well be as significant, possibly even more significant than the First Order. They had destroyed planets too, in a very different way than what the First Order did, but no less damaging for the differences. It had touched the Solo family intensely there as well, from what she knew. So far as she knew all of the Solo siblings were together, except maybe Anakin because now he was here.. 

Anakin had speculated quietly one late night after they'd finished up a particularly gruelling training session, that he was no longer in his own galaxy. He'd been hurt badly, he'd said. Perhaps this had happened instead of dying, but at home, he suspected that everyone believed him dead. 'How could I possibly exist in both universes?' he'd asked her with a quiet shrug, and there had been a darkness in his typically light blue eyes that for an instant had reminded her of Kylo Ren's dark anger. She'd found it unnerving, but it had been only an instant's worth of darkness and perhaps anyone would be allowed that if pulled out of their home galaxy and into one that wasn't familiar. 

"Tahiri was younger, wasn't she?" Rey asked past the war question. She wasn't certain that Anakin really wanted to talk about it and she was fairly certain that she didn't wish to.

"Yeah," she could hear the grin in Anakin's voice even though she couldn't see it. "She was only 9 at the time I think. But she's about a year and a half younger than I am? But she was my best friend so of course she was going to accompany me and Tionne to find Obi-Wan's lightsaber." 

"What's she like?" 

"Enthusiastic," Anakin's first descriptor was immediate and instinctual. He paused then and considered. "Energetic, and sometimes rash. I mean, sometimes I can be too, so that can be a bad combination. She talks a lot more than I do… or she did anyway." 

"She doesn't anymore?" Rey caught her toe on one of the stone steps, and stumbled forward slightly, catching her balance as she did so. 

"She still does, but the war has changed her too," Anakin's voice held some distance and Rey wondered if he was missing his best friend. "I wonder if there is - I mean, there's a Mara and a Chewie and a Mom and a Dad… I wonder if she's alive in this universe or not." 

"Where was she from?"

"Tatooine… but I don't know that I'd find her if I went there. She was raised by Sand People in my universe. But she might have been raised by her parents if they hadn't been killed, or possibly not on Tatooine at all. It's possible that she was among the students killed if she'd been found and was being trained… It's just - I mean, Jacen, Jaina and I don't exist here even though Mom and Dad do… instead it's you and Ben. Who knows what little thing changed to make that the case?" Anakin shrugged. "It'd be searching for a datachip in a star system." 

They climbed together in silence for a while, and Rey considered the variations. Anakin had a point that she hadn't really even considered. What small thing had changed between their galaxies? Or had it been a large thing? What had caused the differences between them? What had left her and Ben siblings and not given them Jacen and Jaina? 

"What were they like?" She asked after they had passed a turn around the mountain and were starting up the next side. 

"Jaina and Jacen?" Anakin stopped briefly to turn around and look at her. Rey nodded.

She hadn't asked about her siblings in this other universe before and she wasn't certain why. Perhaps there was some part of her that was jealous of the closeness that Anakin obviously felt with them. And while she and Anakin had gained a close friendship over the past few weeks they had spent together, there was the knowledge that she didn't have this with her own brother and maybe never would. How could they under the circumstances? 

But Anakin's question had opened up a musing about what might have been had she been the second sister in the other galaxy, if she had been the one that just popped in and was expected to integrate into the family. What would that have been like?

"You and Jaina would get along fabulously," Anakin grinned. "She's an amazing pilot. Mara was her master when she was training and they got along super well together too. Jaina's… determined, but there's always the possibility of her just being super passionate about something and disregarding all common sense. She's like Dad really. She doesn't ask whether or not something can be done -"

"Until after she's done it," Rey finished the sentence for him. 

Anakin turned around and a half grin crossed his face. "Yeah, exactly."

"Dad said that to me once, just before he went straight to lightspeed from a docking bay," Rey grinned back. 

"That sounds like Dad," Anakin shook his head. "Seriously though, straight to lightspeed? And it worked?"

"Well, we're all here to talk about it aren't we?" Rey shrugged. It had felt crazy to her as well but she'd had mostly simulator experience at that point in time. Simulator experience and the Force instincts, and nothing real to go off of. "And Jacen?"

Anakin was more quiet at this question and then it was as if she could feel the smile. "Jacen asks more questions than anyone I've ever known, including myself. He cares, a lot. Maybe so much that it keeps him from moving forward at times." 

Rey didn't really know what to say to that. Or what she had expected. Maybe she had expected Ben in the description, but she wasn't certain that it felt like Ben - it certainly didn't feel like Kylo Ren - maybe it felt a little like Ben. She tried to think back to resurrect rusty memories from her childhood, memories from very long ago, and faded from being repressed and kept apart from her conscious mind for so long. 

"He loved animals as a kid," Anakin continued. "He'd bring home the most random rare lizard or snake or rodent. And then he'd heal it, connect with it, give it a name and try to help it with the Force. His bedroom always kinda smelled," Anakin laughed "But he loved it. He hasn't kept them for so long - the war changed that, or maybe he grew out of it... I'm not certain which sometimes. He was good with healing too." There was a pause as Anakin climbed five steps in silence before continuing. 

"We argued so much, but it was never because Jacen didn't care. He cared a lot about the galaxy, and the light side. I think he was afraid of me sometimes, and I never knew how to tell him that he shouldn't be." He stopped to catch his breath for a moment so that Rey caught up with him and stepped onto the step directly below him. He turned to look at her and then looked down. "Maybe that's because I wasn't certain that he _shouldn't_ be. The dark side of our family's legacy is never as far away as I'd like." 

Rey shivered and glanced up the near vertical rock walls and the fortress at the top of it. The dark side of their family's legacy had left a swath of destruction across the galaxy, and maybe was continuing to do so thanks to her brother - _their_ brother. 

Anakin had stopped talking and was reviewing the clouds that were moving in. 

"Those don't look good," Mara called up from a dozen steps behind them where they had stopped. 

Anakin nodded and looked back down at her. "No they really don't. I'm afraid that lightning that's been circling us may head in closer and that's going to make it difficult to keep going." 

Chewie roared and Anakin nodded again. "Yeah, there's no shelter on this way up. We need to get moving and try to get to the top before that storm hits us."

"How much further are we talking?" Finn sounded as if he wanted to kill whomever's idea this had been in the first place. 

Anakin craned his neck up to try to get a picture. "We're maybe half-way?" He called back down.

Rey could hear Finn's curse, but faintly as a gust of wind blew in and wiped out all but the first syllable of it. 

"Enough talking," Mara called from behind. "Let's keep moving, all of you." 

The conversation had been brought to a halt with a new determination to get to the top before the incoming storm. The problem was that the storm seemed intent upon racing them, and equally intent upon winning. Rey buried her head against the wind and tried to ignore that the rain had soaked through her trousers and was pooling down into her boots. Even with the bantha wool socks that were up around her ankles, it was miserable. Thankfully the wool continued to keep her warm, but it didn't mean it _felt_ nice. The poncho likewise, had kept the worst of it off, but it was beginning to be damp as well and Rey wondered how much longer it would work under these conditions. Mara had said they were not water tight, after all. 

The wind picked up, and the rain seemed to be hitting them almost horizontally than the drizzle that they had been fighting for most of the way up. Anakin had put his head down and was pushing into the wind - somehow managing to cut the worst of the rain around him so that what Rey was getting on her seemed to be unlikely to be what Anakin had hitting him. 

It suddenly hit her: "Are you using the Force?"

"Yep. Got to get ahead," Anakin called back with an economy of words. 

An economy that Rey quickly understood as a blast of rain hit her suddenly. Whatever Anakin was doing required a lot of focus in the Force. It seemed that he might be creating a shield that bounced the worst of it off and around for Rey, Finn, and possibly as far back as Mara as she and Chewie had picked up the pace and tightened the knot of the group so they were all closer together, and Rey found herself wishing that she had been trained as Anakin had been - she could help him then. 

It was this back and forth that continued to get at her. The part of her that had turned away the ligthtsaber when Maz had tried to give it to her, and the part of her that had pulled it out of the snow on Starkiller base. The part that just wanted to be an ordinary girl with her family and normal life, and the part of her that recognized that her family was a part of her and the strengths and skills that came with that family were ones that she would need to come to terms with in some way or another. Right now, the coming to terms meant that she wished she could help. But it occurred to her as she took another step forward that maybe she could. She reached into the Force as Luke had taught her to do - focusing on that feeling of life that always surrounded her. Knowing what it was and what it felt like had been one of the strangest feeling successes that she had encountered during her training, but it served her well now. 

Finding the Force she then focused forward on Anakin, sensing what she'd come to think of as an Anakin shaped presence that was so familiar from their training together, and as she focused, she could feel him grasp onto it, almost as if he had reached out and taken her hand. It was startling enough that it caused her to stop, Finn bumping into her from behind, and Chewie growling a warning.

"Sorry," she muttered, and she took a step again, glancing up at Anakin who hadn't stopped and hadn't looked back, but continued going, the shield around them all still there. 

She could feel his determination easily, perhaps even more clearly than what they'd felt when practicing. It was as if they connected on a new level, or maybe it was just that when they were practicing Anakin wasn't trying to reach out, but keep back, so that she couldn't guess his next move. Regardless, this was new, different and kinda cool. 

The storm strengthened and through the Force Rey could also feel Anakin wearing out despite the fact that she was giving some of her Force strength into his. At some point halfway up she'd felt Mara slide into the mixture too. The three of them working together to keep them all moving despite the uptick in wind and rain and the oncoming thunder. Lightning flashed not so far away, lighting up the entire mountain side, and as it did so, Rey could actually feel Anakin pause and it was the strangest sensation. 

It brought her head up to see what was happening with him, and she could see him staring ahead at what appeared to be a giant boulder. It was a moment's pause and then he moved forward once again and Rey had to take a double step to catch up with him.

He'd seen something - the boulder maybe? But with the lightning he'd seen something? She remembered what he'd said on the ship before - that he'd felt as if someone else had been there with him and Tahiri, and Rey could feel a chill that had nothing to do with the moisture and the wind. That chill was counteracted by a sense of warmth that she couldn't pinpoint. She was going to be very done with this whole Force energy connection thing, whatever it was. 

It was almost as if there was a bemused echo of 'I will too' and Rey wanted to ask Anakin if it was him, but he pulled up short as they came close to the boulder. 

This was about the time lightning flashed seeming almost to hit the mountain overhead, and the crash of thunder left Rey's ears ringing. 

Finn had jumped closer to her and he yelled at Anakin: "Why are we stopping?"

"Follow me," Anakin motioned and headed straight for the boulder. 

Rey looked at Finn, and as another clap of thunder attempted to shatter their eardrums once again, she ducked towards the boulder as well, ending up following Mara who had already stepped up from the rear. 

The boulder sat on an outcropping. It probably was natural, but it might have been man made with the steps. And as Rey thought about the steps, she wondered if they'd been made when the fortress was made or if those steps had superseded it. They almost felt older than the Empire - than Vader - and closer to the age of the mountain. 

"Well, I'll be damned," Finn said from behind her. "There's a cave, thank the Force." 

And he was right. Somehow Anakin must have seen it from below when the lightning lit up the mountain. If they hadn't stepped off the stairs they could have easily missed it, as the entrance was tucked behind the boulder. 

"It looks like a landslide closed this over," Mara said as she stepped into the cave and out of the wind.

It was still loud in the cave, because the thunder overhead was still a case of each clap of thunder trying to outdo the other, but it was protected, there was no wind and there was no rain. It was dark though, so Rey pulled her hood down from the top of her head and started digging underneath the poncho for her glow-rod. When she pulled it out and lit it, she moved it around. 

"It seems big," she said, and her voice echoed a little past Anakin. 

Finn had also pulled out a glow-rod and their beams joined together to light up more of the space. 

"Think this is a natural cave, or man made?" Finn asked. 

"I would say it was not made by the Empire," Mara said simply as she followed the beams of light with her eyes. "And that we may not want to go too far back lest something else uses it as its home," she added pointedly. "Let's set up a camp here by the front and wait out the storm. We've probably got at least an hour's hike up to the top yet, but it's too dangerous with the lightning. This was a good spot, Anakin." 

"Thanks," he frowned. "It was weird, like, I looked up just as the lightning hit - I haven't been looking up much at all. I don't think I would have noticed if it I hadn't been."

"Are you trying to tell me this is some Force thing?" Finn raised an eyebrow. 

Rey looked over at Anakin. "I felt you see it." 

"Yeah, I know," Anakin shrugged, and there was a small grin. "Thanks for that, by the way. You and Mara both. Made it easier."

"And you were making it easier for us," Mara returned. "We do better work together."

"Master Ikrit had done that for us," Anakin said with a shrug. "I wasn't really sure how he'd done it, but I decided to try it and then it worked, but it was definitely easier to keep it up with you both throwing your strength to me." 

Anakin pulled his hood down, slid his poncho off, and walked over towards the entrance of the cave. "I'll keep watch this direction, even though I can't imagine anyone would be here." 

"Sure you take the front and leave us with the back," Finn shook his head. 

"Well, if you're too scared," Anakin looked up at him and for a moment the exhaustion on his face was chased away by a lopsided grin. 

Rey laughed. "We'll take it; we'll be fine. What's the worst that can be back there?" 

"Oh no you've done it," Finn shook his head. "You're tempting fate with that line!"

Chewbacca growled and Mara nodded her agreement with him. "I think Chewie's right. You two are fine to take the back, but I'll take the front, or Chewie will. You need to rest if you can Anakin." 

"I'm fine," Anakin started to protest.

"You were just a human shield against the wind and the rain for all of us," Mara stated matter of factly. "You are exhausted, and you should rest."

Chewie agreed with her and then emphatically offered to take Anakin's place. 

Rey could tell Anakin didn't want to rest while the rest of them kept watch, but he finally nodded. "All right, okay, thanks." 

The poncho was laid out on the ground, and Anakin sat down on it, and then laid down, his head on his arm, his body on the poncho to keep the dirt off. 

Rey turned to Finn and beckoned him to follow her. 

They didn't end up too far away from the others, just far enough back that they could easily catch anything that might come from the back of the cave. Rey suggested they turn their glowsticks down, that the light might attract, or even blind them to anything that was coming their way, and Finn grumbled good naturedly about getting eaten my mountain monsters and nobody noticing, but switched his off and slid down next to her, their backs against the wall. 

"So, the reason we weren't getting rained on so much was Anakin creating a shield with the Force?" Finn asked her, voice low. 

Rey looked over at him, even though she couldn't really see more than an outline of his face. She nodded once before realizing he wouldn't see that either. "Basically, yeah. I kinda realized what he was doing, and I couldn't really do it too because I didn't know how he was doing it - that's not something Luke's shown me - but I figured maybe I could help him." 

"It's still crazy to me that it's true. All this Force stuff. I mean, I guess we'd heard rumors of it, even in the First Order, but it's still -" he fell silent midway through his thought although Rey was certain that didn't mean he'd stopped thinking. If anything it might have meant he was thinking more about all of it. But time to think, for the moment, seemed to be something that they had in a fair amount of abundance. Eventually they would run out of rations, but they didn't have to be anywhere at a particular time and so far as any of them knew, Anakin's Force visions hadn't come with an expiration date or time table. 

"Sometimes it's like I know how to do things, even when I don't know how to do them," Rey spoke into the silence. "Which is very bizarre, but other things are too much for me to figure out on my own. I think I'm becoming more aware of each though. And I know what the Force feels like now, which means it's becoming easier to sort of become aware of when I'm using it, and how I'm using it, and how I can use it in different ways, and if I can try this way to make it be something different. If that makes any sense." 

"Yeah, it makes sense," Finn nodded. "So, uh, Anakin thinks I might be sort of a little bit Jedi or whatever." 

She looked over at him, but she couldn't see his face and had no idea what his expression was. Tentatively she reached out in the Force to see if that offered any insight. Calm, mostly, but with an edge of anxiety. Rey could certainly understand that. She hadn't asked for her Force sensitivity. What would it have been like to have grown up as Anakin had? With it acknowledged as a part of her. 

"Are you okay with that?" she finally asked instead. 

"Yeah," Finn said quickly, a little too quickly. "I mean, I think I am. Probably I am. It's just - well. You know. It's a lot. And I don't know what to do with it." 

"Neither do I," she admitted and it felt like a weight lifted to do so. "I'm pretty certain that it should be someone else carrying all of this, and I wish it hadn't been me, sort of. Except for when I'm glad it's me. Does _that_ make any sense?"

"Yeah, that's exactly it. Like, I think I've been FN-2187 for so long, and I was supposed to be just like everyone else, you know? I mean, the best of that," there was a grin evident in the tone of his speech. "But still like everyone else. And then I didn't shoot villagers, and then helped a pilot escape, and then I got a jacket, and then I picked up a lightsaber, and then I fought with a lightsaber, and then I almost got killed by a dude who knew how to use his lightsaber way better than I knew how to use mine, and then I joined the Resistance, and then I get told by some guy that's not even from this universe that he thinks I've got the Force. And it's enough to give me a headache, you know?" 

"I do," Rey couldn't help the smile springing to her lips, or the dimples in her cheeks. "But you forgot the part where you came to get me off a First Order base." 

Finn had reached out and offered her friendship and nobody had ever done that before. It was a taste of the life she would have, and Rey couldn't deny that her life on the other side of learning that she had the Force was better than her life before she learned that she had it. But that didn't make it any less unreal, or confusing, even if she knew in her heart that this was more the life she was meant to have. 

She reached over to find his hand, it meant grappling around a little bit in the dark, hitting first the ground, and then his leg, and then finally his hand, and she wrapped hers around it. "But, we've both got the same headache, and we can figure it out together, right?"

"Yeah, I guess I've kinda thrown my lot in with you guys," Finn chuckled. "I didn't really mean to." 

"I didn't really mean to rescue a Resistance droid from Jakku with the help of a First Order stormtrooper and my Father's stolen ship," Rey snarked back with a smile. "Sometimes life happens in ways we don't expect." 

"Sometimes?" Finn shook his head. "I think ever since I landed on Jakku, it's been a solid dose of 'never'. _Never_ like I expect."

"It hasn't stopped you from doing the right thing," Rey tilted her head to look at him. That seemed true and it had been a novelty when she first met him. He'd been so willing to reach out his hand and make certain she was okay. No one had ever done that for her before. He'd been so sure of getting the droid back to the Resistance, and even on Takodana, when it had seemed like he was most likely to wander away - he hadn't. He'd come looking for her - _again_. Would she have made it off of Starkiller base without him? Maybe. She'd survived thus far. But maybe not. Maybe his friendship had been critical to her survival in that case. 

Maybe unlike her entire life on Jakku, her real life was an intricate dance of symbiotic relationships where each of them collaborated with the other to enhance their strengths, and shore up weaknesses. And maybe, while she'd prided herself for so long on not being dependent on anyone - there wasn't anything particularly bad about that level of vulnerability. Certainly Anakin seemed to be able to move within it without feeling threatened by needing or accepting the help and strength of others. 

"Yeah, I guess that's true," Finn squeezed her hand. "It's weird, choosing my own thing and not having anyone really dictate it for me. Good weird, but weird. I've got friends and a purpose. And that's good weird too." 

Rey turned to look at the outline of his profile, strong, and yet he wasn't afraid to reach out and help or ask for help. Before she could think too much about the urge she leaned forward, pressing her lips to what - she hoped - was his cheek in the darkness. "Good weird is still good," she said quietly. "When we get done here, I'll help you with some of the Force stuff. Or Uncle Luke can." 

"Yeah, all right, that's good," Finn stammered slightly and Rey couldn't keep the grin from her lips again. 

It was probably close to an hour before the sound of the storm outside had nearly abated, and Mara had returned from the front entrance to shake Anakin's shoulder gently. Finn had fallen asleep on Rey's shoulder, but Rey had been too wired to sleep. The fact that she was about to go someplace that might have been a place her grandfather had stayed was on her mind, a reality that she couldn't push away and as the storm raged, she'd found herself wondering more actively what they would find when they moved forward. 

As Mara stood and looked towards them, and Anakin pulled himself into a sitting position, Rey reached over to shake Finn's shoulder. "Hey, I think we're getting ready to move again." 

Finn jerked himself awake and looked around, raising his hand to his neck to massage it. "Man, shoulda laid down. That angle wasn't fantastic." 

"You'll work it out," Rey said, reaching over a hand to massage the neck muscle for him for a moment before she stood up and reached for her poncho, and the glow rod. She'd turned the latter back on, swinging it around to face Anakin and Mara, when a command to stop from Anakin froze her. 

"Turn it back around there," Anakin was saying and she could see him start towards her in the dark. 

Startled, Rey swung it back around the direction that she'd brought it as Finn climbed to his feet beside her. 

"Wait, _there_ ," Finn's voice was edged with excitement. "I see it too." 

"Are those, symbols?" Rey swung the beam of light from the glowrod back just a little bit so that it could illuminate the wall to their right. 

"I thought this was a natural cave," Finn said. "Jade there said she thought it looked like an avalanche had closed it off." 

"I said it looked like that," Mara pointed out mildly as she stepped up even with Finn as Anakin walked past all of them. "I didn't say it was that." 

"That's semantics…" Finn grumbled. 

"No, that's an observation of possibility, but it does not make it a fact," Mara said, pulling out her own glow rod and lighting it to add more illumination to the walls Anakin was stepping up to. 

As Mara did this, Rey stepped forward, leaving Finn and Mara behind and coming up to join Anakin. "Is that writing?"

"I think so," Anakin, raised an eyebrow and reached for his own glow-rod to bring it up.

Together they shone their lights across the wall. At first Rey had thought they might be paintings only, but as she drew closer she was realizing that they were engravings, not paintings, and it was letters or symbols, not drawings. 

Anakin shone his light on one of them and reached out to touch it with his other index finger. "That's -" he stood up, and shone his light around the wall, up onto the ceiling where the cave seemed to have a break, a bridge that was filled in with engraved carving. "I think this dates back to the Old Republic."

"Prior to the fortress our grandfather made?" Rey raised her eyebrow. 

"I would say very much prior to," Mara stepped up, her eyes following Anakin's. "I think we found the Jedi temple." 

Anakin and Rey turned around simultaneously both of them staring at her. 

"Watch where you leave the beams of the glowrods," Mara said mildly. "Look," and she stepped over to point through the symbols. "I've seen these before with your Uncle. They were often found around early Jedi temples."

"No she's right," Rey suddenly exclaimed. "They were mostly worn off, where Luke was, but there was one place inside, where they hadn't disintegrated like the ones outside and exposed to the weather had. They looked like this." 

"So we went looking for the Fortress and found the Jedi Temple?" Finn's voice sounded skeptical. 

"I'm not certain if we found the temple, or an entrance into," Mara said, but either way, I suspect this is it.

"This looks like a wall, not an entrance," Finn pointed out. 

"Anakin?" Rey looked over at her younger brother. 

He was considering the wall and he finally turned to Mara. "You think we need to use the Force?" 

"To do what?" Finn sounded bewildered. 

"To open it," Rey realized. "It requires the Force to open it in the first place." 

"More than that," Mara said quietly. 'It likely requires a Jedi."

Anakin looked over at Rey. "Are you in?" 

She looked at him and then slowly turned her head to look at the wall. _Was_ she a Jedi? Would the wall recognize that fact and open to allow them access? She'd spent most of the past hour thinking about who she was, the relationship she had to her family, the Force, the expectations, her grandfather, the brother she should have grown up with and the brother she should never have known, and the ownership of all of those things in recognizing that they couldn't be addressed individually. They were mixed together, and belonged together, and Rey was no longer a lone sun, but part of a system. She took a deep breath and decided. 

"Yeah, I'm in."


	9. Anakin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you guys are enjoying this little adventure through the Junior Jedi Knights books just as much as I've enjoyed writing it. =D

Rey and Anakin fell into sync just as they had when she had reached out to give him some of her strength as he helped to keep them shielded from the worst of the wind and the rain on their way up the mountain. They had practiced together before, but what they had done on Vjun had taken it a step further to pull the two of them together into the Force as they reached out towards the door Anakin was confident was there. 

He could feel a question in Rey's mind, and he sent back 'see the temple' hoping that it would make sense. He reached out to grab her hand and palm to palm, their fingers threaded together, they envisioned the temple they might find. 

And when Anakin said _they_ envisioned the temple it was as if they were both building the faith the temple was there. In his mind's eye he could see statues in the style he'd seen in holograms before. Grand, large spaces made out of natural materials and built to amplify the Force, and to remind the Jedi of life. He could see it, and he knew that Rey was seeing the same thing, and a bubble of excitement grew in his abdomen as he realized that this was the closest he'd gotten thus far to connecting with anyone in the Force as he had at home. 

This connection - it wasn't the one he had with Jaina or with Jacen - but it was so close to it. Like a signature written in someone else's handwriting, it was familiar and yet not; but more importantly Rey's faith was boosting his own and that had been something that he, Jaina, and Jacen had always had even if it had only recently been something they had sought to explore and exploit on Myrkr. With Jaina and Jacen the idea that they could help each other out in that way had been something that had only really begun to be perfected. With Rey it had fallen into place without him asking for it. It flamed hope in his future here. 

Anakin focused in on the vision in front of him a giant stone chamber that kept swirling outward, held up by massive columns and six statutes that surrounded the room in front of them, and he was drawn out of his focus only when Finn swore gently under his breath. 

It was then that Anakin realized that the vision wasn't a vision through the Force. 

In front of him was a large domed chamber. Around the edge of the dome were columns to support the chamber, and between each column there was a statue. Some were in surprisingly good shape, but there was one that was nearly crumbled, and many that were in states in between. There was a walkway on the other side of the statues that circled the room. The room was polished stone and marble that Anakin didn't recognize, but the sense of the place was clear.

Anakin turned around. Rey stood beside him - But Chewie was nowhere to be seen. Panic rose up in his throat, tightening it. He couldn't have done something to lose the Wookiee again. There hadn't been any danger. But it was then he realized Mara and Finn weren't there either. 

"They're gone?"

"I think," Anakin forced the panic back, and turned to the chamber again. "That this is only a place for Jedi." 

Rey looked over at him questioning: "If I hadn't -" 

"Yeah, I think you'd still be with them," Anakin nodded. "I think we were right about only Jedi being able to find it. The Empire may have never known it was here, _or_ if they did, they may never have been able to breach its walls." 

Rey's eyes were wide and Anakin couldn't blame her. There was nothing like this on Vjun at home - well, he took that back - there was nothing like this on Vjun that he'd known of. Perhaps it had been there under the Fortress the entire time. They'd never found it, because they'd never known to look for it. What secrets would this place hold? And why had they been able to find it here? They hadn't been looking for it when they came into the cave, not precisely, and Anakin wondered if the Force had been guiding them forward. 

"They must have known," Rey's voice echoed in the chamber as she stepped forward. "Why else would they have chosen this location for their fortress? Grandfather wanted the secrets of the temple and perhaps building here meant he would find them." 

Anakin stepped after her and he stared up on the ceiling. Carvings lined the edges, and a painting of some sort - very old fashioned and traditional likely going back millennia - filled up the ceiling of the dome. 

"It could have been coincidence," Anakin cautioned against supposing too much without evidence, even though he found himself agreeing with her. He followed her in and together they stood under the center of the dome staring up for what surely must have been longer than it felt like. 

"Uncle Luke believed that the Jedi built temples in places that were particularly strong in the Force," Rey said softly, but her voice still echoed a bit. "It's possible that they didn't know that the temple was here, but that they could sense that strength in the Force." 

That felt closer to possible evidence. Had his Uncle told him that tidbit at any point? Or Master Tionne? It was possible, but he hadn't remembered it. They had chosen Yavin IV primarily because of convenience and the willingness of the New Republic to offer the Jedi that space. Even if it had turned out to be strong in the Force and to have a history of the Force within it - Exar Kun, the Sith lord, and the Massasssi and the golden globe - it hadn't been chosen because of that history. At least, he didn't think it had been. 

Nor did he feel like his Uncle had ever specifically mentioned that piece of history and there once again was the dissonance that haunted him constantly here. Even among the familiar things there were unknowns and this felt like one of those. If his Uncle knew, he hadn't told him about it, whereas this uncle knew, and had told Rey about it. 

"I wonder if there's anyway to find out which it is?" He asked as he looked up. 

"Is it important?" Rey looked over at him. 

"I'm not sure," he answered honestly. 

"Well, we're in, the others aren't, what now?" Rey asked after a moment's pause. 

Anakin looked around and he could see the possibility of doors off of the sides in the circle. "I think we need to let the Force show us that." 

"Thanks for the fantastic mysticism," Rey sighed. "What does that even mean?" 

"Sorry, my intuition isn't descriptive enough for you," Anakin shrugged, and a lopsided grin crossed his face. 

Rey made a face at him but didn't protest, instead looking around the room and pointing. "That way." 

Anakin didn't have any other ideas so he nodded and the two of them crossed the chamber towards a giant archway off of the main chamber. He had no idea whether or not it was going to lead somewhere useful, but to be fair Anakin had no inkling of what useful might look like. 

Zayna had given them the information and Anakin had tucked it away without any feeling about whether or not the information was important. But here they were. He'd been drawn to the outcropping, by what felt like an accident, but now seemed as if it must have been the Force itself. So perhaps there was something here that was important - something that would be meaningful to them as they moved forward to try to reach his their brother and to defeat Snoke. 

Symbols and signs were carved into the stone around the archway. Most of them weren't things that Anakin was familiar with. Some he'd seen before once, but he didn't really know them - it had been things engraved into a Jedi hologram, or in one of the places he and Uncle Luke had studied. It seemed as if they were older than most of the things he'd come in contact with, which he supposed made some sense. So far as Zayna could tell, any mention of this as a Jedi Temple had been far before the fall of the Old Republic. They passed through the archway and into what was a dark stone corridor. 

Or would have been, yet along its stone walls lights spread up of their own volition and Rey frowned. 

"Is this a Jedi thing?" 

"I think it may be a Force thing," Anakin said softly, as if talking too loud would alert someone to their presence. "We don't have anything like this on Yavin IV, but there's a lot I don't know about the force." 

"Probably you know more than I do," Rey said. 

"Maybe," Anakin turned to look at her seriously. "But you knew the bit about Uncle Luke saying the Jedi built temples in spaces that were strong in the Force. Uncle Luke never specifically mentioned that to me, nor Master Tionne.." 

"It makes sense though doesn't it?" Rey asked.

"It does," Anakin reached a hand up to touch the walls, which were surprisingly warm considering they were under ground. "Uncle Luke settled us in a place that had strength in the Force with the academy. He was trained on Dagobah with Master Yoda, in a place that was strong in the Dark Side." 

"Do you think this place is strong in the Dark Side?" Rey asked him. 

"Maybe. It housed Vader for however many years. But he didn't die here, nor was it the Emperor's home - Perhaps it's just strong in the Force." 

"Then why does it feel so eerie?" Rey asked him. 

Anakin looked over at her and shrugged because she was right. It did feel eerie, and Anakin couldn't decide if this was just the fact of the darkness and that they were the only ones here, or if that strangeness was coming from a different source - more mystical and less tangible even than their solitary aloneness in an unusual place. 

They explored together for a while. It felt as if they were going deeper and deeper into the mountain but Anakin couldn't be certain that they weren't running in circles. The thought occurred to him that somehow the temple could rearrange itself to their vision. This felt insane, and fantastical, and likely not true, but he was also struggling to come up with a map for where they had been and where they were going and he was not typically so navigationally challenged. . 

Anakin finally stopped in front of a new set of new symbols, having watched them all along the corridor as they walked. He reached a finger up to touch them and stared. "Do they mean anything to you?" He asked Rey. It was possible she'd learned something from their Uncle that he hadn't, or that his uncle hadn't even known, but Rey was shaking her head. 

"I saw some of them though." 

"Where?" Anakin turned to her. 

"The first Jedi Temple, where I first found Uncle Luke," she responded. "This one," she pointed to a trio of circles on top of each other, "And this," she pointed to another trio of circles, this one three over-lapping, the dark part in the middle of all three shaded differently.

Anakin stared at them, but no answers seemed to come, in the Force or otherwise, so he simply committed them to memory. "I'm sure they meant something to someone at some point, They strike me as symbolic, not aesthetic." 

Rey nodded. "The fact that they're in both places means they're old."

"As old as the Jedi Order probably." 

"Maybe," Rey wrinkled her nose. "Shall we move forward?" 

Anakin nodded and they passed through that chamber and out into another one. This one felt darker and more sinister than the rest. Anakin shivered as he walked into it and he could feel Rey beside him shake her shoulders. 

"This place feels different."

"Yeah," Anakin nodded, stopping in the middle of the doorway and staring around the room. "Cold, the rest of the places haven't felt cold, did you notice that?"

"Even the walls were warm, but we're underground."

Anakin nodded. "Exactly. This place is…" 

"Cold, and creepy," Rey took a step closer to him. "As if something evil is lingering here." 

"Maybe Uncle Luke is right, but the places must have the dark side too," Anakin frowned. "It's part of the balance of the Force." 

"But wouldn't it be problematic to lie near that Darkness?" Rey asked him. "I mean, it seems hard enough to resist the Dark Side. If you're sitting right on top of it, wouldn't it become even more difficult? Wouldn't you be even more likely to turn?" 

"Maybe not," Anakin looked into the room. He still wanted to back out of it, but for the moment he stood firm. "Think about it this way, when you're building muscles, you start out with smaller ones, right? The resistance builds strength, so you keep at it, a little more every day. Maybe it's like that with the Dark Side too. The proximity instead of leading you deeper into it, actually builds strength against it." 

"I have this memory of mom saying that if you play in the firepit, you get charcoal on you," Rey raised an eyebrow at him. "That would kind of suggest the opposite."

"Play in the engine bin, you'll get-"

"Engine grease," Rey finished their father's variation on the theme and her cheeks dimpled when she did so, the smile fading pretty quickly as Anakin could see her being reminded of Han and also what had happened to him. 

He turned serious. "Was there a dark place at the first Jedi Temple? The one you found with Uncle Luke?"

"Not that I'm aware of," Rey frowned slightly. "But also, my awareness of the Force is likely less strong than yours or Luke's. I tend to react on instinct."

"Then it's a theory that might be wrong. But for right now, I don't think there's anything here. Let's go," Anakin looked into the room once again. He felt as if they were just wandering aimlessly in the wilderness, and that eventually they would need protein and fuel once again, but if there was something important would they recognize it when they came to it? 

Sometimes it would be nice if the Force was a little more forthcoming. Like, here's the signpost of what you need to do next. Turn here, do this, say hello to this person, and oh there you are - done, task completed. Like a hologame or something., now you've leveled up.

Anakin sighed and turned around to follow Rey, but she was nowhere to be seen. Cold fear choked at his throat, the sinister feel of the room pressing in on him as if it might have the strength to flatten him. She hadn't said anything and he hadn't heard anything. He drew a deep breath and pressed his shoulders up. She must have simply walked further out, into the hall, and he rushed forward with her name on his lips to be brought into a complete stop when a humanoid being stepped into the door.

It wasn't Rey.

It took every ounce of willpower he had to not immediately reach for his lightsaber, but the being didn't seem to be threatening him in the moment. It was taller than he was, dressed in robes, the Jedi insignia on its shoulder armour - a guardian perhaps. The old temples had frequently had guardians back in the Old Republic. This temple possibly stretched back from before the Republic. 

Surely if it was a guardian, it wasn't a threat to him or to Rey. 

"Where's Rey?" Anakin asked him, keeping his senses alert. "Who are you?" 

For a moment the being said nothing and then he stepped forward into the light. Its face was covered with a mask, and Anakin didn't step back, but he could feel edginess creeping into his senses, and he pulled a breath again to center himself in this moment and this place. The room and its sense of things was throwing things, creating an unwillingness to completely trust his take on the situation, but he didn't believe that this being was an immediate threat to him, 

When the being finally spoke, it felt like a masculine voice, deep and serious, but not immediately threatening. "Your companion is alive and well."

"Then where is she?" Anakin asked. "She was here a moment ago. Has she continued on?" 

"She is alive and well. This is between us."

Anakin could sense he wasn't going to get anywhere with Rey's whereabouts for the moment, and so he set the question aside to be dealt with in a moment or two. His own voice threw back with a confidence that was almost startling to him. "Why me?" 

"Because you are the one with the greatest training. She is only a Padawan." 

"She's more than a Padawan or a youngling -"

"Yes, but her experience in the Force is new. Yours is… more mature."

"Who are you?" 

"We are the Temple guards." The response had come in a chorus of three voices, as a second and third being had joined the first, standing on either side of the door. 

So they were guards. Anakin had been right in his theory. But this Temple couldn't have been used for hundreds maybe thousands of years. There were beings that lived hundreds of years - Yoda had been over 900, and Anakin's own Master, Ikrit, had been hundreds of years old as well. But these beings might have been here for thousands of years, and they were larger - more humanoid and Anakin knew of very few species that lived so long. "That's not possible," Anakin murmured. 

"Would you put limits on what is possible in the Force? You? A Solo and a Skywalker?" 

The ease with which they knew who he was made him blink, showing surprise despite his best intentions to stay guarded. 

"We know what you know," they explained in a chorus to Anakin's unspoken question. "We know you." 

"That's impossible, and it doesn't make any sense. I have barriers you can't just pull things from my mind." Anakin kept his attentions on the three. Two held back, while the original guard who had spoke first came forward.

"But if you created us?" 

This made Anakin pause. Had they created this entire temple? He still had more questions than answers about why they were here and what they were doing, but it didn't make sense for him to have created guards out of thin air, and certainly didn't make sense that he would be cut off from Rey while he did. "I didn't -" 

"How do you know?" 

"Fine, you're the Temple guards," Anakin cut off the questions. If Jacen was here he might have kept them talking, but Anakin was getting irritated. "Let's say I believe that it's possible for you to be here and it's possible for you to be talking to me like this. What happened to this temple? What happened in this space? Why did you stop using it?"

"The temple was lost with its Master." 

Anakin took a step to the side allowing himself to step slightly out of the line of the guard, while not technically stepping backwards. "What does that mean? Why would one master have any claim over an entire temple?" 

"One master would not, but if the conditions of his leaving were such that it would taint a space - the temple might be closed." 

The truth felt real. At least that had frequently been Anakin's experience in the Force and while it didn't answer much, it did answer the question of what might have happened in this room. This space had felt cold, and he and Rey had both noticed it. 

"You feel it don't you?" This was one of the second guards, one that had held back. A voice that had a lilt, a higher pitch, and sounded female. 

"The cold in the room," Anakin looked at her, and then back to the guard nearest him. "That's what it is. Rey and I both noticed it, it's like, being doused under a cool air vent when you step in here. "When was this? It wasn't-"

"It was not your grandfather, no. You know that story. This Jedi lived nearly a century before that point. He sought secrets in the Force no human mortal can contain. He sought to do so and nearly tore his own body apart. To live, he had to feed off of others Force energy to reinvent and contain the knowledge and the power he had sought." 

There was a weird relief in that, although Anakin wasn't certain why. When it came to horrific things that his grandfather had done as Darth Vader, the events were numerous, and terrifying, and Anakin knew many of them. But perhaps he hadn't wanted to know one more after all. It might feel absurd to protect any memory of his grandfather, but it was an honest desire. 

He glanced around. "Is that what happened here?" 

"Eight knights died. The Guards were not enough to save them." 

This settled in his stomach. Anyone who could have taken out eight knights alone seemed likely to be a formidable threat. "And the Jedi Master?" 

"He left the Temple, and the Jedi. He has not been seen by the Jedi Order since." The guard stepped forward, placing two feet together in a rest stance. 

"What was his name?" Anakin asked, both fearing that it would mean something to him, while also fearing that it wouldn't. 

"Master Enoban L'hnnar. Decorated, acknowledged for his skills as a diplomat and instructor, but tainted." 

The name meant nothing, but if he was a diplomat, surely there would be information that could be found on him - if anything had escaped the purge. "What happened to him?" Anakin asked.

"If he could create a prison for his power, he had determined the ways of extending life." 

"And the Jedi left here?" Anakin asked as the guard's face appeared to flicker. He blinked to hold-on, but the last words were felt in the back of his skull and to the front of it an insistent voice. 

"Anakin?" 

He was staring into Rey's face, directly in front of him. He shook his head. "What the hell?" He muttered as he glanced around the chamber. 

"What are you looking for?" Rey raised her eyebrows at him. "I couldn't reach you. You were standing here, alive, but not awake, or conscious in anyway. I was beginning to really be worried. This room got really cold." 

It was then that Anakin realized her breath was frosted, and his was too. "I had - a vision. I think." 

Rey looked instantly alert. "What type of vision?" 

"I'll tell you about it, but I think we should rejoin the others. Did you see anything else here while I was, uh, while I was out of it?" 

"No. Just you," she frowned slightly. "Which, to be fair, if your vision is anything like my last one, I think I'm okay with that." 

Anakin shrugged, and nodded. "It wasn't bad. Just bewildering. Maybe important." 

Rey nodded and reached for Anakin's hand. "Do you think we can find the exit." 

"Hopefully," Anakin murmured as he followed her. Staying connected and grounded, but he looked back into the large chamber as he left. And the chill, it felt like the Dark Side, like so many of the places he'd been before, and something more that he couldn't explain. 

He told Rey his theories about being able to find the exit and the two of them bunkered down into focusing on the notion of getting out. It was three turns later when they found themselves in the large domed room they had started in. 

Rey blinked at it. "I have no idea how we got here." 

"Nor do I," Anakin shook his head. "Please don't ask me to draw a map of this temple from our wanderings - I couldn't do it. I had a half theory we were creating it, which doesn't feel truthful or possible, but nonetheless." 

Hands together, they picked an archway to head towards, both focused on the cave and their companions. Walking through it found themselves standing once more in front of Mara, Chewie, and Finn. 

"Rey!" Finn had her hand out of Anakin's before Anakin had much time to readjust to the darkness of the cave. "You just disappeared," and he threw his arms around her. 

* _We had started worrying._ * Chewie roared and Anakin gave him an apologetic look. 

"Sorry. It took us a while to figure out why we were there." 

"But you did," Mara raised an eyebrow, her head tilted curiously. 

"Maybe," Anakin nodded, and as the five of them downed a protein bar before heading back out, he detailed what had happened in his vision. He took a bite of his own protein bar as he reached the end of the story, looking over to his Aunt. "I don't suppose the name Enoban L'hnnar means anything to you?"

"Unfortunately not," Mara had finished her own bar and was folding the wrapper into small pieces to tuck back in her vest pocket. "But when we get connectivity again, I can do some searching."

"I sort of figured that," Anakin sighed. "But I had to ask. At least it doesn't sound like the storm is as loud right now." 

"Nah," Finn stood up, having packed away his trash as well. "It hasn't thundered this entire time we've been talking, and earlier when I stuck my head out the rain and wind was much less. Probably will still need those poncho's though." 

"But you look like a Resistance fighter in it," Rey teased gently, as she too stood up. 

"Har har," Finn chucked one of the ends of his poncho her direction and she lept out of the way with a surprising amount of grace. "Y'all ready?" 

As Finn and Rey headed for the door, Chewie lumbering after them, Mara considered Anakin who was finishing up the last of his bar quickly before he could put his poncho over his head again. 

"It feels significant," he replied in answer to her unspoken thought. "I can't tell you why, not knowing anything about him, but I don't think I made it up. I think it was real." 

"Maybe it will become clear when we reach the fortress. I feel like one of the questions that may be significant in all of this is whether or not Vader knew of this L'hnnar." 

"We're still not certain he knew about the temple, much less was able to enter it." Anakin pointed out, pulling his poncho over and shaking out the hood. "If he wasn't, how could he have known?" 

"Some other source - he chose this mountain to build the fortress." 

"In an entire planet worth of mountains, that feels too much to be coincidence." Anakin brought up his hood and placed the mystery back on the shelf as he headed for the stairs. .

Finn had been right. The storm had calmed down. There was less lightning and almost no thunder. The wind had calmed as well and the rain had shifted into a cold mist, which made the climb tedious and exhausting, but not quite so fraught with the feeling of impending doom and life imperilment. They had to watch their feet as they climbed higher and the moisture tended to create slippery spaces on the rocks, but despite this extra focus they made steady progress towards the top. 

As they climbed, Anakin's mind returned to his vision with Tahiri. There had been a presence in his vision, something that he could feel outside of the range of what was typical here. But so far he hadn't felt anything like that as they'd climbed. And even in the temple - the feeling had been one of cold and evil, not the same feel as his vision with his best friend. Really he hadn't felt much of anyone at all outside of his immediate party. 

The vision brought back memories of Tahiri, her accusation - you didn't come back - still rung in his ears. He couldn't help but wonder if that had truly been her somehow in the Force, or if it had been merely his subconscious at work, telling him what he was already afraid of. The questioning of it, tended to push him down, however, and he knew it wasn't smart to dwell on it. Doubting his connection to the Force and what it was seeking to show him was not helpful in the here and now. Not in an atmosphere that already was bleak enough, and certainly this place was bleak. The acid rain, the constancy of the dark clouds overhead, all of it tended to make Anakin feel broody. He could easily turn despondent, and he knew that about himself, and that despondent usually focused itself into anger, and that anger could lead him to a dark place. He knew that about himself as well as he knew his ability to use a lightsaber, so he turned his thoughts towards the castle above them. 

What would it have been like to have been his grandfather at this place? Why had he picked Vjun specifically? Was it because it was so unfriendly to life that it was never going to have many people arriving here and staying? Had it been the mood itself? When Anakin had visited Vjun the first time in his own world he'd been only eleven, and just off a trip where he'd begun to put together the pieces of what would be a life philosophy that continued to guide him. That first trip had connected him to the past both because of his grandfather, and also because of Kenobi's lightsaber, a weapon that Anakin had held for a while, and that had ultimately inspired and become part of the hilt that hung at his hip right now. He'd walked away with a greater understanding of his grandfather.

So why was he here now? The temple hadn't even been a part of the vision he'd originally received but maybe it was no more than a distraction from his grandfather's fortress and what he needed to find in this world. Or maybe it wasn't what he needed to find at all. Maybe this was about Rey and what she would find. 

The questions loomed and as lightning split the sky overhead he kept his own head down and tried to quiet his mind as he walked, focusing on his own breathing and the steps in front of him. The questions and uncertainty faded into background noise and instead he reached into the present. Not the past, not the future, but the now. The now included Mara's steel, Rey's quiet optimism, Finn's warm support, the loyalty of Chewbacca. 

Anakin realized strangely that the rain brought life somewhere to this planet. The vegetation that was here had learned how to thrive despite the unfriendliness of the moisture falling and the darkness of the clouds. There was still life built into the systems of this planet and this system, and Anakin could still find them. The Force was at work here as it was everywhere and just because it had been used as a home for the Dark Side didn't mean that life could not flourish and light could not be found. 

Light could be found in most darkness if someone was only there to shine it and Anakin and Rey were here. Finn and Mara too. Chewie. They could shine the light. 

"Wow," Finn said, stopping as he hit a step. 

Rey popped in behind him and she also stopped. 

"Keep moving," Mara advised from the back. "But carefully in case there are any alarms." 

Hopefully there wouldn't be any Anakin thought. But he stepped up behind Mara and kept his senses alert as they moved forward onto the service platform entrance which was what had caused Finn to pause. 

Anakin could understand why. At this point, the fortress appeared to be almost carved into the mountain itself, the service platform carved into the side of the mountain, and the walls that moved upward looked like the granite of the mountain more than the steel and duracrete that might have been expected from Imperial construction and likely was part of the First Order's style as well. Although it was a service entrance, it was a tall door - easily three human's could have stood on top of each other's shoulders and walked through it without difficulty. 

"Can we get in here?" Rey asked as they stood under the outcropping. 

Anakin reached into the Force to consider the locks and shook his head. "No. It's blocked behind it I think." 

"You can tell that?" Finn asked. 

"The Force," Anakin said. He looked over at Rey 

She nodded. "It's like you can see it on the other side of the door right?" 

"Yeah," Anakin nodded. "You see it too." 

"It's how I used to be able to tell where there were parts to scavenge. I mean, not exactly, because that wasn't this clear. This is clearer." 

Finn stared at the doors for a minute. "I don't get it." 

Anakin tilted his head and considered. "Try closing your eyes and clearing your mind." 

Rey nodded. "And then there's that sort of instinctual knowledge." 

Finn had closed his eyes, and the group stood in silence for a moment, the mist continuing down around them. 

"Yeah, you guys say 'clear your mind' as if it's easy. I keep thinking of really random stuff, like whether we packed enough protein bars." 

Anakin couldn't help but grin. "Yeah, you're right. It's easier said than done. Try focusing on the doors specifically then, not totally clearing your mind, but focusing on one thing." 

Rey reached over and grabbed Finn's hand. Finn's eyes opened for a moment, glancing at Rey and she just nodded. "Try again." 

Anakin shifted his weight as he watched them. His theory that Finn had Force sensitivity he was pretty certain about, but even if he did, Finn might not have the same affinity for mechanics that Anakin and Rey shared. It was that ability that made it relatively simple for them to guess that they would need to go elsewhere. Without an affinity for that, and not everyone had it - Jacen didn't so much, but Anakin couldn't influence animals in the way his brother could - it would be more difficult, and particularly difficult when untrained, to get a glimpse of beyond the doors. 

"You see that?" Rey said suddenly, pulling them out. 

"Yeah, well, I think I did." Finn said. "It wasn't so much 'seeing' it, more like just knowing it?" 

Anakin nodded. "That's a reasonably apt description." 

"So we can't get in through here," Finn looked up. "Don't tell me there are more stairs?" 

Anakin grinned and shrugged. "There are more stairs." 

"Man, my calves are going to be durasteel." 

"It's should be three stories up to the main platform and the entrance I used with Tionne, Ikrit, and Tahiri when we visited. Assuming the layout is what it was in the fortress in my galaxy. But, so far…" 

"Up we go then," Finn responded. 

Three flights of stairs didn't take long in comparison to all of the climbing they had done over the past twenty-four hours. As they reached the top, the wind whipped past them on the landing platforms, and it was Rey who stopped this time. 

"The shuttle." 

"It's powered down," Mara observed. "And there doesn't appear to be anyone in it." 

"It's Kylo Ren's shuttle," Finn pointed out. "I'd know it anywhere, I saw it often enough making my rounds on Starkiller and in missions." 

"Then he could be hiding his presence in the Force," Anakin suggested. 

"If he's in the shuttle, or if anyone has, it's likely they've already spotted us," Mara said quietly. "I suggest we move forward towards the entrance and get ourselves inside as quickly as possible, but stay alert. If you feel danger, say something. But right now, I don't sense anything immediate." 

Anakin nodded. His Aunt's danger sense was well honed at home, and while it might be dangerous to assume this Mara Jade's was equally well honed, Anakin couldn't help but feel that it _was_. Still, he walked carefully towards the massive entrance doors, he kept his own senses open for anything including the sense of Kylo Ren anywhere around. 

The massive doors in front of them were locked, and a mechanical voice stated dispassionately: "Please state the access code for entrance."

Anakin considered this. "Artoo opened it for us before. Anyone have a droid in your pocket?" 

"I should have brought Artoo," Rey regretted. "I left him with Uncle Luke, but in all fairness I thought we were going to return directly there." 

"Well there's nothing for it now," Anakin said matter-of-factly. "I think we'll have to address it in another way." 

"Let me look at it," Rey said, and she stepped up to the ledge, opened the panel, and began playing with cords inside. Anakin watched her with some admiration. He could use the Force to know how things worked, and usually come up with what was needed, but Rey seemed to surpass him. He suspected this was Force sense combined with a lifetime of experience pulling parts from old Imperial starships on a desert world in order to survive. 

"There's always a back-up supply channel," Finn pointed out, glancing over Rey's other shoulder. "Sometimes if you take out the first before you remove the back-up it'll set off security measures." 

"Got it, I think." Rey bit her lip as she removed the final bolt. 

A large blast door came down over the door, causing Finn to jump to the side so that he didn't get sideswiped. "Definitely got it," he stated dryly. 

"Oh, wait it's this one," Rey swapped plugs, and two doors creaked open, the blast doors, and then the internal one. 

"Hold on," Anakin said as he reached to his belt and pulled out his lightsaber and stepped to the front of the group. He switched the saber on, and then he used the Force to toss it into the room, and it swirled like a boomerang across and then back again and he caught the hilt in his hand and breathed out, powering it down.

"What was that about?" Finn queried. 

"There were lasers activated when Tahiri and I were here," Anakin shrugged. "I just didn't want to see anyone cut in half." 

"Looks like it's all clear though," Finn stepped up even with him.

They walked into the room and a rush of memories pushed back at Anakin as he did so. The statue of his grandfather, broken as it had been at home, and the room itself reminding him of his family's history but also of his own. For a moment he stood in front of the broken helmet and stared down at it. He realized Rey had come up beside him. 

"He had a statue of himself in his own castle." 

"It's not that much different from the family portrait we had hanging over the staircase in our Coruscant apartment," Anakin shrugged. "Slightly more pompous, but same idea more or less." 

For a second he could feel her stare. "We grew up so different." 

Anakin looked over and met her brown eyes with a gaze of his own. "There were giant portraits and statues of people all over the old Imperial Palace, which was where we lived for a long time before we moved out to our own place. I guess you kinda get used to it in that context." 

"Feels like it'd be really weird to have a giant statue of yourself staring at you everytime you walked in though," Finn remarked coming up beside them. 

"I wouldn't want it," Anakin agreed. 

"Despite that, we've got to assume Kylo Ren is here, right? And while I'm not particularly anxious to run into him, cause like, I really just got over my last run in with him… should we be looking for him?" Finn looked over at the other two.

It was a good question and one Anakin wasn't certain he had the answer to. "Why is he here?" he wondered aloud. 

"Was he in your vision?" Mara asked as she stepped up on the other side of Rey. 

"Someone was, but it wasn't clear who. Maybe it was Ren." 

"Maybe we should split up," Mara suggested. "We'll move more easily in smaller groups and cover more ground. Chewie and I can go one direction, you three go the other direction." 

"Won't it just be easier for him to attack us in smaller groups?" Finn raised his eyebrows. 

"There's someone Force sensitive in each group," Rey added to Mara's suggestion. "Chewie's got his bowcaster which can do some damage as we've both seen."

"I kinda wish I had a lightsaber," Finn said. "Not that I did so hot with it before, but still, with several of us having one, seems like I'd fare better."

"We might be able to find you one," Anakin offered. "Based on my memory, there are traps here, like specific ones created to trap people who aren't Jedi or don't have the Force. Like, holographic projections over pits, that sort of thing. Like Rey said, we should have someone who is Force sensitive in each group and not just because of Ren, but because of these traps. Use that sensitivity to check everything." He made a full circle glancing around the halls off of the main entrance. "It doesn't look precisely like I remember, but it was six years ago," he shrugged. "But we found Obi-Wan Kenobi's old lightsaber here. It was the first one I had. There's no guarantee it'll be here, but... " 

"We could look," Finn said. "I'd rather find an old lightsaber than a lightsaber carrying masked man." 

Rey vigorously nodded her agreement of this notion and Anakin could tell that she was anxious about the prospect of coming face to face with her brother again. 

"Which way to the lightsaber?" Finn asked. "I mean, theoretically speaking." 

Anakin considered and nodded to the left. "This way, I think. Shall we check out the left while you and Chewie take the right?" 

Mara nodded her agreement with this. "Keep your commlinks available too. Not just the Force. We can call to each other with the Force, assuming it's not blocked out, but the commlinks allow another communication point. We should have both functioning in case one gets cut off." 

They moved off in the opposite direction of Mara and Chewie and as they walked Anakin considered the castle. It was older than the one in his memory, and it looked different in his mind. But then the history had been different and he knew there had been battles in the place in his timeline before he was really old enough to remember. The statue had been broken before though, and it was here still, broken. So something had happened here, although who knew what. It was an eerie sense of deja vu just being here. 

"This door?" Rey asked. 

"I don't know, how do we know which one to go into?" Finn asked, as they stopped in front of a closed one. "Should we be looking in all of them?" 

Anakin was pulled out of his thoughts as he considered, quiet for a moment to reach out for something that might give him some clue about where would be good to go. "I don't think all of them, although we could. But I don't think it's necessary." 

"Then let's try this one," Rey said, reaching for the keypad. 

The door didn't open immediately and she frowned. 

"Here let me try," Finn stepped forward, putting in a code. He gave it a moment and when it became clear that it wasn't opening he entered another one. Then another.

"Is it going to have one of those too many codes and you're locked out or it sets off security things?" 

"Unless it's something really important behind it, probably not," Finn said. "We always reserved those on Starkiller for the things that were huge secrets. But I'm also about out of basic First Order codes to try, and there's no telling that any of these will work. After all, the Empire was a long time ago and you would think that they would have -" He stopped as the keypad flashed green and the door opened. "Changed them." 

"Well, maybe they changed some of them, but not all of them," Anakin clapped Finn's shoulder. "Remember that one you just used, we may need it again. "You want to lead the way?" 

"Want to?" Finn chuckled. "You sure there's no traps in here?" 

"Nothing I can sense in the Force," Anakin shrugged. "But that doesn't mean that there aren't traps." 

Finn rolled his eyes and moved forward, Rey following after him, and Anakin was left to bring up the rear. The room they'd moved into appeared as if it might have been a kitchen at some point, which probably went to why nothing significant had been triggered when the wrong codes had been entered. Anakin couldn't help but find it impressive that the codes had been similar at all, but when he mused about this aloud, it was Rey who came back with the suggestion that made the most sense. This particular fortress would have been off limits to all but a very few - even the security codes would have been limited to probably only a small majority. If someone took those codes with them, something might have ended up re-used. 

"Or it could have just been coincidence," Finn had pointed out. "There are only so many combinations after all." 

"And if we had Threepio here, he'd tell us exactly how many, you can be certain of it," Anakin had chuckled. 

They had moved through the kitchen and into a hall on the other side. The nice thing about this was that it didn't seem to have any of the security traps that Anakin and Tahiri had run into during their traipsing through the castle when he was a boy. In fact most of the security seemed to be of the sort that had let them into the kitchen, and Finn's code continued working as they moved through door after door. This was clearly the other side of the fortress - not the side that had been used by officers or Vader's guests, but by the droids and waitstaff, and whomever else Darth Vader might have had on hand. And as they roamed, at times they could hear the rain outside very loudly, and at other times it became very little more than the most distant of rumbles. 

"The thing is," Anakin said as they pulled up in front of a supply closet filled with crates, some of them emptied and thrown asunder. "We aren't likely to find any of Vader's treasures on this route. This seems to be the route that those in the serving class were using. And probably, let's be honest, we're talking mostly droids." 

"You don't think he had humans?" Rey queried. 

Anakin shook his head. "I mean, maybe I'm wrong, but this was his secret fortress, his hide-out, maybe even from the Emperor himself. I never heard Uncle Luke say if Palpatine ever came here, but even if he did, he probably didn't frequently. That meant it was Vader's place to hide his secrets. Sentient staff can be bribed to talk. Droids can be memory wiped, and it's harder to splice them without undoing them." 

Finn nodded slowly, running a hand over the wall nearest them. "That makes sense. People, even those that are trained to not really think much, are likely to disappoint sometimes. I mean, look at me. But where are all those droids now? Shouldn't they still be here, roaming about?"

"We're not the first visitors?" Anakin suggested. "We weren't at home either, but I think there have been other people here - and who knew what they were looking for, but droids could be stolen and sold for parts, or-" 

"They could attempt to splice one and find out Imperial secrets," Finn returned back. "It's so eerie. It is eerie right?" 

"It's like a haunted house almost," Rey agreed. "I feel like I need to keep watching over my shoulder." 

"It's almost like you can feel him still here," Anakin nodded. "When I was younger, that was… I don't want to say it was part of the appeal, but it was part of what I gained from this place - a better understanding of him." 

"I'm not certain I'm getting that," Rey looked over at her. "And I'm not sure I want to." 

Anakin looked down the corridor that stretched in front of them and nodded to the door straight ahead to indicate that they should try that. "I think if it's something you're meant to get out of it, it'll come on its own." 

"What did you find out?" Rey asked him, waiting for Finn to open the door, which slid open and they walked through into what appeared to be a storage room of some variety. 

"He had a holo of Uncle Luke here. He must have put it in his chambers after he round out that Uncle Luke was his son. I realized that family was important to him, even besides turning away from the Dark Side to save Uncle Luke from the Emperor. That it had been important before that. He hadn't been so twisted that it couldn't reach him. I'd known that, I guess, from what Uncle Luke had told me, but somehow it really hit me when I was standing in the room where grandfather had once stayed, staring at a holo of my Uncle that looked so much younger. I'd known it, but I hadn't internalized it prior to that." 

"Is that why you think Ben can be reached? It must be why Mother does. She says he's got Vader in him, but that's what she's thinking isn't it?" 

"She hasn't been around him since he became Kylo Ren," Finn pointed out, picking up a box and peering into it. "I think if she had she'd know it's not going to be easy." 

"It wasn't with Vader either," Anakin remarked. "I don't think anyone could think it would be simple with Ren." 

"You think it can be done though," Finn replaced the box lid.

"I do. I mean, so long as he's still family and any part of the family is important to him, I do." Anakin admitted. "But it doesn't mean it will be easy or absolute. That's not how these things work. And to be honest, I have very little idea of how these things work because I've never done anything like this before and if it isn't important to him - I'm not certain if we can break through it." 

Rey was quiet for a while after that and Finn walked in front of all of them towards the door. Anakin followed, senses alert for any trap just in case. 

Finn opened the door, stepped out into the hall and was quiet for a minute looking both ways. "I think this might be back out into the main drag, or whatever you want to call it." 

Anakin stepped up beside him and nodded. "Yeah, I think you're right. And unless I'm completely turned around, that way is back towards the entrance and the statue, and to the right will take us further into the castle." 

"So are we headed back, or further in?" Rey asked. 

"We haven't really found much of anything," Finn pointed out. "Not Ren, which that's fine with me to be clear, but we haven't, and nothing of Vader's that's of any value and definitely no lightsaber for me. Not, you know, to make this all about me or anything," he grinned.

Rey rolled her eyes with a quick grin at him. "It would be good for you to have one if we meet Ren." 

Anakin looked down the hall, trying to match it with memories that were hazy from experiences that might not be one hundred percent similar anyway. The castle wasn't exactly the same, and this wasn't the same, and trying to make it the same was only going to get him into trouble. So far none of the security systems that they'd uncovered when he'd explored it as kids had been here or turned on. "I think right," he stepped forward. "Finn's right that we haven't found much of anything and we're not currently in a rush." 

" _Should_ we be trying to find Kylo Ren?" Rey asked Anakin. "We're certain he's here. Is anyone else worried that we haven't seen him?" 

"He's got to know we're here, right?" Finn looked at the other two. 

"Depends on if he has anything in his ship that could alert him." 

"I think he knows," Anakin guessed. "And he may see if he can find us, but in the meantime, I think let's see if we can dig a little deeper. All teasing aside, it wouldn't hurt to find Finn a lightsaber, just in case we do." 

Finn grimaced. "It'd be better to have three of us against one I guess." 

Rey reached over and grabbed his arm. "You held your own before."

"Until I got knocked out and nearly killed," Finn shook his head. 

"But you've got more to go on than you used to," Anakin offered. 'We've done some practicing. And we'll all be together, regardless." 

Rey turned down a corridor to their left, and she stopped so that Finn nearly ran into her, and Anakin stopped just behind both of them.

"Wha-"

"There are beasts at the end of the corridor," Rey hissed. 

"I think we found something important," Finn muttered. "Look at those creatures." 

Anakin pushed around Finn's shoulder to see what Rey was looking at. 

It was easy to see why she had stopped short. The beasts at the end of the corridor had six legs, with spines all over their tails, and spikes running down their head and snout. The rust color tended to emphasize the scales on their skin, and they were snarling, angry - looking as if they might start rushing towards the three at any moment. Fortunately, Anakin thought he knew what they were dealing with, and reaching out in the Force to try to touch the creatures and calm them down only verified this for him. 

"Drakka boars," Anakin informed them. "Except it's not." 

"What?" Rey turned around to him. 

"Do you have something I can throw down there?" 

"Are you mad?" Finn turned around to look at him. "Those things look as angry as your dad's Rathtars, just not quite so big." 

"I still can't believe Dad was transporting Rathtars," Anakin muttered. 

"Anakin," Rey persisted. "What are you doing?"

"They're not real, at least I don't think they are," he said, reaching into his own pack to see if he could find something that could be easily thrown without breaking. "Try reaching out to them in the Force, both of you - see if you can touch their minds. If they're real, they should feel angry, murderous even, but they aren't real." 

"Holos?" it was Finn who figured it out, reaching into his own pack and handing Anakin a disc. 

Anakin nodded and took it from Finn's fingers. "Rey, have your lightsaber ready, just in case I'm wrong."

"You're inspiring a load of confidence," she pulled it from her belt.

"Sorry," Anakin turned over his shoulder to give her a lopsided grin before he tossed the disc towards the boars, using the Force to allow it to go further than it might have normally. The disc appeared to slice right through one of the animals, and they heard it clank on the ground. The animals didn't move in their direction or acknowledge the disc in any way.

"Huh," Finn shook his head. "That's one the First Order could have used for security. Nobody'd want to go past those creatures." 

"Well, next time you see them, you can pass on the tip," Anakin responded. "Let's go get your disk back." 

He pulled out his lightsaber, started towards the holographic images, his eyes on the ceiling for the projectors. He remembered that Tionne had been able to disarm the holographs by destroying the projector itself. He was nearly to the beasts with their terrifying teeth and claws within easy reach of him, when he thought he spotted it. He ignited the lightsaber, swept upwards, and the lights flickered, and the holographs disappeared. 

"Did you have these when you visited before?" Rey asked as she joined him. 

"Yeah," Anakin nodded. "Also there was a big pit, so keep your eyes on the ground in front of you - but it should look like a big pit now, not be covered by a holographic ground like it was when we found it. And also, Finn? You're right about the finding something important. We're closer. In fact, if I remember correctly," he let his voice trail off as he turned around to the wall behind the holographic beasts. 

"There," Finn spoke before Anakin could. "There's a door there." He stepped forward but as there was no passcode panel, he couldn't enter it, so he pushed his weight against the stone which moved just a few centimeters and then held solid. Rey stepped up to join him and add her weight to the door, but the stone stayed. 

"Where's the entrance?" Finn muttered. "Like, there's been places to enter codes on all these, and this feels like it's just an ancient castle door." 

"Well, this worked before, we'll see if it does now," Anakin swallowed as he joined them on the door. As a child it had been just a feeling, something that had told him to say it. As an adult, the feeling wasn't particularly as strong, other than the fact that he'd known it worked at home. Experience said it might work again, but it felt silly - childish to reach out in faith to place his palm against the rough stone of the door. "I am Anakin. Let me in." 

"Really?" Finn muttered under his breath.

There was only an instant's pause before the door swung open without any additional fight and with no noise to accompany the motion. 

"It worked before," Anakin offered as way of explanation and he stepped forward, Rey and Finn close behind him. 

The room they were in was similar to what he'd remembered. A small room with a dome, it echoed in some ways the much larger Jedi temple room that he and Rey had spent time in earlier down in the bowels of the mountain itself. But where that room had been a massive dome supported by many columns, where the room that he'd found the Sith holocron in, had been equally massive, this one was almost intimate. It was filled with a filtered blue grey light, which wasn't exactly as Anakin remembered, but what was as he remembered was the column in the center of the room bathed in white light from above. 

"That's Kenobi's lightsaber?" Finn asked. 

"Looks like it," Anakin nodded. "You can get if you want."

"It's not going to eat my hand or create some sort of destructive security system, right?" 

"It didn't before," Anakin couldn't help the grin that sprang to his lips. "And I don't get any sense of that sort of danger." 

"You don't now," Finn struck back smartly. "But if I get squashed under a rolling stone, I'm blaming you." 

"I'll take full responsibility," Anakin chuckled. 

Finn stepped forward and removed the lightsaber from the column, and the three of them held their breath for a moment. When nothing happened Finn breathed a visible sigh of relief and turned the hilt of the saber over in his hand. 

Anakin and Rey stepped up and Rey reached over to look at the design, and then to look at Anakin's. 

"They're so similar," she noted. 

"This was the first lightsaber that I carried,"' Anakin noted. "Not for long, but then when I got old enough to make my own I ended up working some of it into my design." He pulled his own hilt up and rested it in his hands next to where Finn held Master Kenobi's. "See, here… And the original crystal was the one from Master Kenobi's, but I changed that a while ago. This one's blue if you turn it on. Or at least the one in my universe was."

Finn held the lightsaber out and away from the others and he ignited the blade. It shot out light blue, but still powerful despite the years of disuse. 

"Why?" Rey looked up. 

"Why is it blue? Or the crystal," Anakin looked back over at her. 

"Yours is purple, did you want a different color? How does that work even?" 

"I don't have a crystal exactly," Anakin held his lightsaber out and ignited it as well. The purple and the blue mixed together to add to the cast of bluish light coming from what appeared to be a ring of skylights around the room. "I have a lambent, which, I had to work to get it to connect. When I was trying to rescue my friend Tahiri from the Yuuzhan Vong, I ended up with the crystal broken. I couldn't find another one, because of where I as, so I had to get creative. The lambents were grown by the Yuuzhan Vong to create light - everything they did was biotech basically, bioengineered for certain tasks, but living - well in a manner of speaking since all of it seemed to exist outside of the Force. So I had to figure out how to get the lambent, which I couldn't really feel in the Force, to work in my lightsaber. But because I was working undercover as a slave for the Yuuzhan Vong, I was able to adapt it early in its growth." 

"And it's purple?" 

Anakin hesitated at that. "I don't really know that the lambent was or wasn't. But the lightsaber is. I've never really thought about why beyond that. It worked. It did what I needed for it to do when I needed for it to do it, and it showed me something about the Force, and about myself, and about the Yuuzhan Vong," he turned the blade back and forth for a moment, then shut the lightsaber down and looked back at Finn and Rey. "I guess that last wasn't much use to me in the long-run since I'm here, but the first two things I'm still using." 

Finn shut Kenobi's down and offered the hilt to Anakin. Anakin reached out to take it. It rested solidly in his hand, similar in weight and distribution to his own lightsaber. Perhaps it was part of why he had built his own after Kenobi's -- it had always felt so natural in his own hand.

But part of him knew there had been another reason. One that maybe even had been a bit selfish on Anakin's part, but he'd always wanted to have some knowledge of the Jedi his grandfather had been. And this had been yet another way that he could feel a kinship to the grandfather that he had never known. Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi had been friends and allies once, and it was Anakin's way of recognizing that and bringing that history into himself. 

He stepped forward, a lightsaber in each hand, and out of the way of Finn and Rey he brought them both back on. He swung them around in a basic training maneuver and then brought them back to his side and switched them off again. When he turned around it was to offer Kenobi's lightsaber back to Finn. 

"Show off," Finn was grinning at him. 

"You should take it," Anakin nodded at him. "You'll have a lightsaber now and you may need it." 

Finn nodded and took the hilt back. "Thanks," he offered. "You sure you want to not just keep it - you looked pretty cool there with two blades." 

Anakin grinned. "And it's my turn to thank you for making me feel really cool, but we should all be armed, and you've got the Force. You should have a Jedi's weapon." 

They stepped out of the room again, and Anakin led them back down the corridors towards the main entrance. 

"Do you think there's other stuff here?" Rey asked Anakin as she stepped over a pile of stone that seemed to have been brought lose from the ceiling above them by a blaster bolt.

"Yeah, probably, but I don't know exactly what else to look for," Anakin said. "And I think we should maybe try to reconnect with Mara and Chewie having found the lightsaber. And maybe, try to go find grandfather's private quarters. Or specifically go looking for Kylo Ren." 

"I still can't quite believe we haven't found him," Rey's eyes were straight ahead as the corridor emptied out into the main entrance. "I think we should do the private quarters thing. You found out things there, and maybe I will too." 

Anakin nodded. "Then I think it's up these stairs." 

"I'm beginning to hate stairs," Rey commented wryly. 

"Any future homes we have will have lifts," Finn chuckled beside her. 

"On the other hand, it's easier than ropes to climb up star destroyers." 

Anakin grinned broadly. "I can believe that."


	10. Ren

_Spices permeated the Republic City marketplace. Breathing in was pure pleasure. Walking through the marketplace with a small hand clasped in his gave him the sense of being entrusted with adult responsibility. That perhaps when his Father had chided him for his attitude the week before - a hypocritical snapping that Ben couldn’t help but feel was unfair under the circumstance -that maybe it had been one of the last times that it would happen._

_“Can we get a Jogan fruit?”_

_Breha was looking up at him, eyes wide, her hair pulled back from her face in a series of small buns that weren’t unlike mini versions of some of her mother’s hairstyles._

_Ben grinned and he looked back at the market. “Yeah, maybe, if we can find a place that sells them.”_

_His mother kept telling him that she wanted him to meet with Luke. He is family, she’d said, and he can train you to use the Force. He will help both you and Breha later. You are both so strong in the Force. There’s much good you can bring the Galaxy._

Much good.

_He’d long ago gotten used to the apprehension that seemed to underlie her optimism like a fault line through otherwise sturdy bedrock. Ben’s mother was durasteel that couldn’t be moved. She was a force in his life and she always had been. From the earliest time that he could remember, she had pushed and expected and wanted so much for him. And yet… from the earliest time he could remember, his Force sensitivity seemed to press against that bedrock, and he sometimes wondered at the strength of the support she offered – could it be crumbled if the wrong thing pressed against it?_

_He wanted to believe that unlike the galaxy, which seemed constantly poised to swirl out into complete chaos, that his parents could be counted on to always be there. He told himself that even as his dreams pressed against the belief._

_But the chaos was at bay on this particular day during the Festival of Life. In markets just like the Republic City Market there would be hundreds of thousands of beings celebrating the reinstated old Republic festivals. Within Republic systems it was a day to spend with family and friends and to spend inordinate amounts of money on celebrations and sweet things and fruit. Well, for normal families. As was typical his mother was spending the day within the halls of the Republic attending ceremonies and speaking on the Holonet about the virtues of freedom and liberty._

_Ben’s attention was drawn by sound above the typical market symphony; he reached out in the Force like Luke had taught him to do the last time he had been on the Falcon with Breha and Ben and Han. There was a crowd near the edge of the market, and they were agitated, and when he reached out he could almost catch the call of their words above the markets, a note that was counter-point to the celebration within the beings in the market. A protest of some variety._

_“Ben?”_

_“Yeah,” he nodded and put his other hand out on Breha’s shoulder, guiding her back towards the center and away from the unrest. “I hear them.”_

_“What is it?” Trusting brown eyes looked up to match his own. He shook his head. “People who aren’t happy with everything.”_

_“Why not?”_

_Ben glanced back over his shoulder. His younger sister was old enough now that she would ask these questions, but he wasn’t certain she was old enough to understand the answers. There were times he wasn’t certain he did. He knew what his mother’s answer would be. He knew what his father’s answer would be. They didn’t come from the same place, but they both would arrive on the same path – systems had to be free to determine their own paths. And it wasn’t that he disagreed with the idea. It seemed like a good one, but at the same time, he could sometimes feel the pain even here on Hosnian Prime, and the lack of trust between the politicians that his mother rubbed shoulders with. The people who were leading all of it, didn’t necessarily seem to understand what the people here in the Market were truly worried about._

_His father’s response to that would be that of course they didn’t. They couldn’t because they hadn’t been born into understanding what it was like to go hungry, and frankly – this would be accompanied with a wag of his finger – neither did Ben. A comment that felt absurd because would his Dad have wanted Ben or Breha to know what it was like to go hungry? It felt like the fact that his dad had pulled himself up through a lot of really bad times, and he’d talk his way out of a lot more was worn as some badge of honor when really it was just the life he'd had prior to the Rebellion. His Dad would continue that it was a lot better now than it had been under the Empire. Letting people choose their paths, and having the freedom to do so, good or bad, it was the only real way._

_His mother’s response would be that systems would not have the same priorities, and neither would people, but with time and patience, there would be consensus of what was important, and that the Republic as a government would work. It had worked for thousands of years, after all. It had been protected and upheld and revered by the people. It had fallen as a result of a manufactured conflict, and a pull of deep darkness at its core. No one had gone untouched by that, and even good men and women had been tricked into serving it for a time. One could serve light and work towards a stable and safe place for every being in the galaxy, while recognizing that it would not help every person in every moment at every time._

_The galaxy wasn’t entirely safe, and Ben knew this. His Dad’s method was to talk until that didn’t work, and then to blast out of it. His Mom’s was to talk, even when it wasn’t working, and then possibly to blast out of it. But both felt like it avoided the reality that there was a lot of chaos in the galaxy, and maybe it wasn’t as terrible as his parents made it out to be to put some control back in the hands of the government to stop things like piracy and smuggling in far off systems. To help reroute resources to planets that were suffering. It felt at times as if the Empire might have enslaved planets to strip them dry, and the Rebellion his parents were both heroes of had come in and destroyed the enslavers, set free the slaves, but given them nothing back to rebuild with – and didn’t that leave everyone equally vulnerable?_

_“They’re afraid.” Without even checking Ben knew this was true. He could feel it._

_“Of what?” Breha’s hand shifted in his, just a little bit sweaty against his palm. “Mama says we shouldn’t be afraid. It leads to the Dark Side.”_

_Ben guided her towards a stall that looked as if it might have the fruit she’d asked for. With her question something in his stomach seemed to spike sharply, a palpable enough feeling that he glanced around, scanning the crowd for something – anything – that might have caused the feeling. But nothing seemed out of place, nothing seemed abnormal, in fact no one seemed to be paying any heed to the teenager with dark unruly hair and the young girl he was caring for. Why would they?_

_“Sometimes I think fear is just fear.”_

_“But it’s not good is it?”_

_Ben knew his answer should probably be that no, fear wasn’t good, but was fear even something that could be so morally labeled?_

_“I think everyone gets afraid sometimes,” he shrugged, distracted by trying to push away the sense that something was wrong._

_It was nothing particular. They had walked away from the crowds that were angry, and those crowds had been on the outskirts of the market itself. It would be fine. It was the first time he’d been allowed to go out alone with Breha, and he liked the feeling of being able to take care of her. They were in the Capital City of the Republic. It was one of the most secure places in the galaxy. There might be reasons for people to be genuinely afraid on other planets, but not this one._

_“Look, yeah, I mean,” he sighed and tried to figure out how to put this into words for his younger sister. “Fear can be a thing that’s bad if it keeps you from doing something you need to do. But I don’t think feeling fear is a Dark Side thing. I think everyone gets afraid sometimes. So, I don’t think you can turn it into some sort of moral statement. It’s just a feeling. And sometimes it might even be a feeling that saves you." He rushed through the words and ended with a question to distract her: "You still want fruit?”_

_“Yeah!” Breha’s eyes brightened and he stopped her in front of a large display of fruit from across the galaxy._

_“Kay, stay here next to me,” he told her while he caught the eye of the Rodian who was standing behind the booth, and started to haggle over what price he was going to pay over the different fruits._

_One benefit to having watched his Dad argue back and forth was that he could get a good price on fruit, although Ben suspected he could have gotten a better deal than what he’d ultimately taken. But, he suspected that none of these market sellers were so well off themselves. The Rodian’s jacket looked as if it had seen most of a decade, and paying a few credits more for fruit, wasn’t something that was a problem for Ben. But paying the actual ticketed price would have marked him as a target. He’d paid more than he’d needed to, but less than the sign, allowing the Rodian a large profit margin. One being who would be hurting a bit less tonight._

_“Here you are,” he handed the purple fruit over to Breha. “Stay close cause it’s crowded.”_

_“Do you think we can do this again?” The words were almost unintelligible around the chunk of purple fruit in his younger sister’s mouth and Ben grinned._

_“Guess it depends on whether or not Mom and Dad surmise that I haven’t let anything too terrible happen to you while we’re gone,” he reached for a piece of the fruit from the bag for himself, keeping tabs on the Breha shaped presence in the Force next to him as they walked through the crowd since they were no longer holding hands. “If you tell them I was mean then they may not.”_

_“I won’t tell them that,” Breha giggled, juice dripping from her chin._

_“Good, then yes, maybe.”_

_A center fountain could be seen in an open space just ahead of them. In the festival spirit of the day a band gathered on one side playing traditional music once outlawed by the Empire._

_“Come on, let’s go sit,” he urged and pushed his way through the crowd, feeling Breha walking directly in his footsteps, and at one point a – probably sticky – hand reached out to grab the edge of his brown jacket. Clearing was kind of a misnomer with all the beings in the market, but there was an edge to sit on the fountain, and so Ben reached down to pick Breha up so she could sit with her legs dangling off of the Wayland marble that the fountain was made up of. She continued eating, and so did Ben, the music from the Republic filtering into his senses and at least partially soothing some of the nagging discomfort in his stomach._

_“Maybe we should head back when you’re done,” he finished off his own fruit, putting the core of it back in the bag and licking his fingers as he glanced around._

_“Are you afraid Ben?” Breha had stopped munching around the core and was looking up at him._

_“No,” it was a lie, but it was only part of one because he couldn’t put his finger on anything in particular that he was afraid of. The source of his anxiety couldn’t be tracked. Maybe it was just residual from the feelings of the crowd or maybe it was spreading throughout the crowd – a sort of mild nervousness at the fact that there were political protesters at the festival on this day. “No, I just – there’s that toy place you like. I was thinking if we headed back now we could stop there.”_

_“Okay,” Breha was watching him carefully._

_“I’m pretty sure it’s nothing, just a feeling. Right?” He bent down to reassure her at eye level._

_“But sometimes feelings can save you.”_

_“Yeah, I mean, sometimes it’s good to listen to them,” he nodded._

_“We can go to the toy place.”_

_Ben gently squeezed her shoulder as she worked on finishing the fruit off completely. Most of the time his younger sister seemed to approach the world with an optimism he just couldn't find in himself. Maybe it was just that she'd been born later or that she was still as young as she was? Likely, it was probably the latter, because she really wasn't old enough to completely understand most of the stuff that happened in the galaxy. Ben was still trying to figure it out himself._

_The sharp spike of warning was echoed by a cry of alarm from the courtyard. Ben's head whipped around. An altercation was in the alley nearest the main avenue. There weren't security droids anywhere nearby although Ben had seen several throughout their walk. He grabbed Breha's shoulder, putting his foot up on the edge of the fountain and bringing himself to standing height on top of the basin, getting a glimpse over the edge of the crowd._

_He could see now that there was a Duro family surrounded by four protesters - and what they were angry about Ben couldn't tell - but people seemed to be giving them wide berth, not stepping in. He frowned and he jumped down._

_"What is it?"_

_"I think some people need help. You can stay right here, yeah? Like don't move from this spot?"_

_Breha nodded solemnly. "I won't."_

_Ben stared into her face. For an instant he hesitated. He shouldn't leave her. But taking her with him meant that if there was real trouble he was taking her into danger, which maybe was what all of these feelings had been about in the first place. He should probably consider her his first priority and both of them simply leave. But he'd seen three young Duro kids pressed up against a cart, frightened, and whatever was going on - he might be able to talk it down. His Dad would be able to talk it down, his Mom would be able to talk it down, and Ben had to try, even if it meant leaving Breha alone for a few minutes._

_"It's really important, cause I won't find you if you move."_

_"I know. I'm right here. And I have the comm."_

_A kid's cry broke his worry, and he gave Breha a quick smile and said "I'll be back," before he darted into the crowd in front of him, augmenting what strength he had with the suggestion from the Force that there should be movement._

_Three humans and a rodian, and all of them looked nasty._

_"What's going on?"_

_"Get out of here kid, this doesn't concern you!"_

_"It's a festival day, and there's a lot of people here in the market," Ben spoke around the pounding of his heart. "Making certain it's a good day for everyone does concern me. You guys here for the festival?" Ben stepped forward, his senses alert as he spoke to the Duro he assumed was the father._

_The response was in Duro and Ben really wished that he had Threepio with him, but it couldn't be helped so he reached out with the Force trying to get a sense for what the man was saying. There was fear, which was understandable, but a certain amount of relief, and Ben put himself between the attackers who were growling, and reached out to one of the kids. "My sister and I have some fruit over here and we've been looking for someone to share with - would you like some?"_

_There was a look between the child and the father, the parents, and Ben kept his posture open, his body between himself and the attackers._

_"Come on let's go," one of the men muttered to the other._

_Ben kept his senses stretched out, knowing his ability to sense what was going on might be the difference between solving this without disaster._

_"Follow me," he offered to the family, and the female Duro nodded, placing a hand on her child's shoulder as she joined beside Ben._

_Ben kept walking with the child under his hand, his senses alert. And as they walked away the tension in the crowd began to ease away.  He could hear the grumbling and aggressive language from the instigators as they also were absorbed by the crowd._

_As they headed back towards the fountain the male Duro stepped up. "Thank you," he said in halting basic._

_Ben felt a swell of pride that he'd been able to help even if he wasn't trained in diplomacy like his mother or had his Uncle's experience. He could do things without either of them by his side, and whatever his mother might fear from the Force it had held him now - helped him. It was valuable to use._

_"Yeah, sure," he responded. "I just couldn't stand by and watch."_

_He glanced over towards the fountain, looking for Breha's buns, but there were too many people between here and there. A gnaw of worry rose in his stomach when he couldn't see her, but how could he when she was shorter than everyone else. He pushed it down and motioned towards the fountain. "I'm serious about the fruit though, come on over."_

_Ben knew where he'd left Breha. It had been on one of the dips inward towards the center. She'd been sitting there, and he'd told her not to leave, but she was gone. The worry knot threatened to press up against his skin and explode his body as he called her name. He'd told her not to leave. She'd never disobeyed him before. She was smart enough to not…_

_"Breha?"_

_The family was left forgotten as he clambered up on top of the fountain. He couldn't go back to his parents without Breha. She'd been in his care. They almost never let them go out. He couldn't have left the family to be picked on, but he couldn't have taken her with him. She was fine, surely. He would feel her if she was afraid. Wouldn't he feel her if she was afraid? Wouldn't he feel her?_

_"Breha!?"_

_There was no answer, and his voice was caught in the crowd's rumble before blending into the uproar from drums, musicians, protesters, and a galaxy on holiday._

* * *

Kylo could not deny that it felt the Force had brought him to Vjun. But equally he could not deny that it felt as if it had been expressly against Snoke’s wishes. The droids were working, but part of him wished only to explore further. He knew that he should have long since moved from the meditation chamber that had at one point been his Grandfather’s, but he lingered, wanting to know that presence as he once had.

Those moments when his grandfather had reached out to him had been among the only moments of his life where it had felt as if he was doing the right thing. And those moments had stretched into actions, actions where he could tell himself he was fulfilling his grandfather’s mission to restore order to the galaxy, and thus in so doing he would alleviate himself of weakness and of all other sins. It was necessary to do these things to restore that order. It was necessary to follow Snoke because Snoke, like the First Order, had the power to make his grandfather’s vision become reality.

And Ben, although Ben’s wishes were no longer particularly relevant, had understood that. It was why he had been reborn as Kylo Ren, the leader of the Knights of Ren, the one who would see Darth Vader’s vision laid out and stand as his rightful heir.

The wind swirled around the tower outside. It was a mournful sound as the storm picked up once more. Kylo stood in the tower surrounded by the remnants of a life once lived and it was impossible to not feel somewhat melancholy in this.

He had spent hours poring over holofilms and other information about his grandfather provided by Snoke. Kylo Ren had learned as much as he could about a man he had never known so to better enact his vision so that the galaxy at large would be a more secure place for most of the beings in it. But standing here where his grandfather had almost certainly walked, and most definitely meditated, Kylo thought that he would feel his grandfather again. Instead there was only loneliness.

Objective, avoid the melancholy, leave, deal with whomever had landed on the planet if he needed to, and return to his mission from Snoke. There was nothing here to be gained.

He turned to the window, staring out across the vast waste of the planet surrounding him. Why had he been brought to this place? Was there something special or unique about it? Or was he just wanting there to be?

The comm on his belt rang and Kylo reached for it.

“Yes.”

“A party of five, four humans and one wookiee, entered the facility,” the droid informed him. “And we have a call from the _Finalizer_ , should we patch it through?”

Kylo suppressed a sigh. “Yes,” he told the droid crisply.

“Lord Ren," Hux's voice was crisp and unemotional. "You are off course for your current mission. Are you in need of assistance?”

In all honesty Hux's professional query was a relief. It stood as a reminder that Kylo had a mission and a task in front of him and that he should not be drowning in what was foolish emotion. That was something that better befit Ben Solo than it fit Kylo Ren, grandson of Darth Vader.

“You don’t know what the mission is. How do you know I’m off it?” He snapped back at Hux, glad for the distraction, and unwilling to let him know Kylo had been pleased to hear from him.

“You were intended to check in and you have not done so. Vjun is not where you were intended to check-in from and yet it is where the beacon on your ship checks in from.”

“Are you having me followed?” Kylo allowed the dangerous edge to snap into his voice. “I didn’t realize you cared so,” he added, this a jab at the emotions that would have been expected from the physical nature of the relationship they had begun.

“This is not about you, Ren,” Hux spat, offended. “This is about the mission and the First Order, and you potentially endangering it by unnecessary and irresponsible side-trips. When you go off from me talking about dreams and visions what am I to think when your ship is off the expected path the Supreme Leader provided me with?”

“You needn’t worry your pretty head,” Kylo absorbed the heat of the concern, even as it was deflected as being something else entirely. “I’ll be back to fuck you in two or three weeks, the same as always.”

“Be certain you don’t fuck me over in the meantime,” Hux sounded genuinely angry now. “You still haven’t answered my question.”

Kylo couldn’t help the smile of knowing that he got under Hux’s skin. He could picture the flush on Hux’s neck always so visible against the ivory skin.

“Hyperdrive repairs. The droids have it in hand. Which is more than I can say for you and your emotions.”

“Check in when you leave. That’s an order, Ren.”

“I don’t take orders from you.”

“It isn’t from me,” Hux’s voice held an edge that suggested great insult at the idea that it had been from him. “Careful, Ren. Your visions are not an acceptable substitute for the Supreme Leader’s orders.”

He broke off the connection before Kylo could respond to this, effectively keeping the last word. Kylo rolled his eyes and stared out the transparisteel window into the storm that was rolling in, darker than the previous one.

“He worries for you.”

The unexpected words came from behind him, a statement of fact, but he had felt no one approach. As he reached out he could feel a presence and it was one that held some familiarity. Having hesitated enough to not demonstrate how off his guard he had felt, Kylo turned.

A figure stood on the other side of the circular chamber, transparent in blue, and a face Kylo recognized..

“Grandfather.” Not a hologram, although that would have been the most likely thing in this situation, but it was not the feeling his grandfather's presence had ever given him before. Something about it was off, like a fragrance he knew, but was unexpected in this context. “How are you here?”

“Returning like this requires persistence and a certain sense of place." The ghost in front of him shimmered brightly, the face he carried the one of a younger man, closer to Kylo's own age than his grandfather would have been at his death, and certainly not wearing the mask of Lord Vader.

“You came before, in other places, but then you stopped coming.” Kylo sounded petulant, even to his own ears, and he shook off the accusation, attempting to shake off the sudden emotion that followed it. He was only partially successful. "I’ve been asking for you to come back for a long time.”

The silence that followed this made Kylo look up to see if his Grandfather was still there. His Grandfather was watching him, and as he took a step closer, that there was something in the ghost's eyes.

“Ben, I’ve never come to you like this.”

“I know that, I mean, I’ve never _seen_ you –”

“No," the words held the weight and authority that Kylo knew from holovids of Lord Vader's work among the galaxy. "I’ve never come to you in the Force.”

Kylo froze. There had been hundreds of times in his life when he had felt his grandfather’s presence. Times when his grandfather had specifically guided him on a certain path. Even before he had recognized it as his grandfather, it had continued long after he'd known the truth. The presence was familiar and certain.

And it was not this presence.

As he reached out in the Force that was a certainty. The presence he had known as his grandfather was dissimilar to the one in this room. Yet this presence was familiar, like something he’d known a long time ago. It was not the same presence. It felt like –

The uncertainty flickered across his face as the realization fell and it seemed so obvious that it left him feeling shamed. The familiarity of the presence in front of him was not unlike that of Ben’s mother or that of his uncle. A shared family resemblance in the Force that he'd never felt before. It had to be a trick, somehow.

“I don’t understand.” Kylo’s words felt hollow to him. “How – why now? If you haven’t been…?”

Anakin Skywalker stepped forward towards the meditation chamber and for a moment he seemed to examine it.

“The Force is larger than I could have imagined, Ben.”

“I’m not Ben.”

His grandfather ignored the interruption. “This was home, when I was with the Empire. I spent hours in meditation here. Here, at least for a while longer, I seem to be able to respond in this way -- to speak with you.” Here he stopped, and standing on the other side of the meditation chamber across from Kylo he leaned forward. “Who have you become?”

Kylo blinked.  

Ben's earliest memories were of nightmares, darkness blacking out the skies. He sometimes wondered if those memories hadn't begun in the womb. As a young boy, he'd known a presence that had pushed him to explore his abilities, even as the very real fear both his mother and his father seemed to have of him doing so. When Breha had been kidnapped, that weight of fear had fallen into accusation. Accusation unsaid and denied, but Ben carried the weight of it throughout every part of his body and soul. And in every moment his grandfather had been there - supporting him.

“You were the one who told me I could use my Force powers –” He started, his voice was clear enough, but he could feel his hands wanting to shake. “You told me Luke held me back. You encouraged me to find someone who could help me. You helped me find the Supreme Leader.”

“Ben –” the Force ghost in front of him seemed to catch himself. “ _Ren_ , he enslaves you. I would not have led you there.”

“I’m not enslaved,” Kylo spat at his grandfather’s Force ghost, and then grew angry at himself for having this conversation. “How do I know you are him? How do I even know this isn’t some sort of trick?”

“If you are convinced that it is a trick what would I say to convince you otherwise?”

Kylo wasn't convinced of trickery and that felt like part of the problem. The message from Hux lay forgotten, still needed ship repairs forgotten, the five who were breaching the fortress forgotten. There was a ghost in front of him, and when Kylo reached into the Force he could feel family – Ben’s family anyway. It wasn’t something he’d ever felt before when he’d believed his Grandfather was speaking with him. Why hadn’t he? How would someone manage that trick now? Force signatures could be hidden, but to be actively altered? Could that be done?

“Ren,” his grandfather looked at him. “You want to talk to me. I don’t know how long I can maintain this.”

Kylo frowned.

“You keep calling me Ren, why?"

"You'll find your answer in Mandalorian culture.”

The answer meant nothing to Kylo, and it seemed his grandfather was sending him on a chase. Why?

"Because names matter," his grandfather waved a hand answering Kylo's unspoken question. "They say something about who you are, or who you are not…" A pause and a shake of his head. "You have so much fear.”

“I don't.”

“I can sense it in you. Fear about what the Supreme Leader would say if he knew you were here talking to me. Fear what Hux will say when you return. Fear of what the identity of the scavenger will turn out to be, even as you _know_ the identity of the scavenger. You fear this younger brother and you fear that he is more worthy of my name than you would be. You are bleeding fear.”

“I am not bleeding fear, and you’re wrong – I don’t fear these things. I wish to follow what the Supreme Leader has set out, I am trying to build the government that you believed in -the work _you_ started –”

“The work I started was to save my wife’s life, to keep my children safe, to protect the helpless in the galaxy,” the voice was chilling in the room. “I failed at all of it. If you want to finish my work, if you care about my legacy, heal your family, Ren…”

There was no way that it could be anything but a trap because his Grandfather’s work, everything that he’d known, everything that he’d gone after, was to bring order to the galaxy. Kylo had studied him for years; he’d studied Vader's holocron, he’d read and watched, and listened at the feet of Snoke. And if it had not been his grandfather who led him to Snoke then who?

“You know if you are brave enough to face truth,” Anakin Skywalker’s voice was warmer, but no less firm. His presence seemed to shimmer for a moment. “When you change your name, when you are given a new name and identity, it says something about you. Your ties to the past, or your promise to the future. Ben will never leave completely, but it may not ever suit you again. Yet Kylo is not your own. You may accept Ren, or not, but you can find the context in which I suggest it to you."

There was another shimmer as the ghost of his Grandfather’s presence wavered out like a bad holographic transmission. Kylo took a step forward, and as he did, the presence came back.

“Your brother and sister are here,” Anakin said. “Go with them.”

“I can’t go with them-” Kylo started but the presence had flickered out completely.

Almost as if it were a whisper in the room he heard Anakin’s voice once more. "Ren, you are my grandson. The order you seek must be found within before it can ever be established without."

The presence was gone.

The only noise in the room was the sound of the storm growing outside. Thunder rolled, the tower reverberating in response.

Kylo stood staring at the place where his 'grandfather' had just been.

Could someone fake this? Was it possible it had not been his grandfather's voice he had heard all these years. Was it possible the presence that had become a comfort to him and brought him to Snoke had not been Darth Vader? But it had to be him - it had always been him - Kylo had known that it was him because he'd told him things about Kylo and his family that no one else should have been able to know. But the lack of similarity in the presence he'd believed, and the familiarity in the presence here today. It felt like staring at DNA evidence, could he not trust it?

Frustration erupted and Kylo reached for his lightsaber, powering the red blade on as he turned around to the ancient panels of a castle that had been abandoned for decades - except for possibly the presence of the grandfather he'd been seeking for the last ten years. The blade connected with metal and steel as the sparks flew. The raw cry of a wounded animal echoed around the room. Fear-driven rage leaked out through his lightsaber which was operating as an extension of his own body to destroy everything in front of him.

The blade flickered.

It took Kylo an instant to realize it wasn't the blade but rather his eyes, tears hot in the front of his vision.

He threw the blade to the side; it powered off, landing across the room against the far side of the wall where his grandfather had stood.

He slumped down, his breath feeling ragged even as actual sobs wouldn't come behind the tears. In the back of his mind a continual refrain played - stop crying, don't be weak, big boys don't cry Ben, get your chin up kid, you'll be fine.

Thought fragments ran through his mind like dust devils across a sandy desert. What would Hux tell him? His Father hated crying. Would Snoke look for him? Could Snoke feel this now? His grandfather's lightsaber. It should have been his. The scavenger - she'd looked like, and felt like - Hux would be horrified right now. Had he been wrong? What if he'd been wrong? What if he'd been right and this was the wrong? Why couldn't he tell? Why couldn't he just _know_?

By the time he pulled himself to awareness his legs ached as they had that first week he had spent with Snoke. He had been alone in a chamber, left without food or water, and left to sit within a very limit number of positions because of the size of the chamber, and his legs had ached - his entire body had been filled with wanting food, water, things that Snoke had promised to give him on the other side of this test.

Kylo pushed himself to his feet ignoring the sharp stings that ran through his thighs as he did so. He could breathe, and he did, in and out - a method that was closer to the exercises that Luke had taught Ben so many years ago than anything he had learned with Snoke.

Observation: His thoughts needed organization.

He had long believed it had been his Grandfather who led him to Snoke.

He had long believed that this was because his Grandfather understood, as Kylo had come to believe himself, that the galaxy itself had been plunged into chaos. It was a chaos that would harm everyone. It had harmed his family irretrievably.

He had long believed that Snoke was the key to helping him do what his grandfather had been unable to complete.

The presence in the room had said nothing he would have expected from his grandfather.

The presence had been undeniably familiar.

The security code word used to get past the security system on this building had been his grandmother's name.

The presence had claimed his grandfather's work had been to save his wife.

Snoke had never mentioned this.

The grandfather he'd believed he'd known his entire life had never mentioned this.

That grandfather had felt nothing like this.   

Pressure pushed against his chest again, and Kylo opened his eyes, looking around the room and breathing in and then out.

He had destroyed one side of the room in his frustration. Bile gathered at the back of his throat at this observation. This wasn't the _Finalizer_. This had been his grandfather's. Identity of the presence aside, that was a fact.

It felt as if it had been years since he spoke with Hux even though it had been at most an hour. Possibly not even that long - because the droid had told him that humans had entered this building - with a Wookiee.

That felt like a coincidence. Too much, perhaps to be a coincidence.

The frustration and rage had drained away leaving him anxious and as if the slightest provocation might send him over the edge. It had also left him feeling as if he'd spent too much power in the Force. The Dark Side was supposed to boost your power. It always did in the moment, but afterwards it wasn't unusual for Kylo to feel weak. He'd supposed that as he grew, as he learned more and understood the power of the dark better, that this feeling would pass and would be replaced by a sense of ease and confidence that he always felt when tapping into the power itself.

He wondered if this was true. Snoke had implied that it would be.

Snoke might have been lying to him.

A traitorous thought, and one that he did not want his master to overhear.

He frowned, straightening himself, and reaching deep into the Force purposefully - he reached out and drew the lightsaber he'd discarded to him. It flew into his hand as if it belonged there.

Now that he was quieter he could reach into the Force around him and begin to realize that there were people coming towards him. People were coming to the tower - but not the five the droid in his ship had mentioned: There were three.

Three familiar presences - one that shone eerily familiar, one that held the same familiarities of the grandfather he'd just spoken to not exact, but recognizable nonetheless, and a third, less recognizable, but he could guess.

The door to the room was locked, but likely the Scavenger could open it as he had done. And this brother who had been gifted his grandfather's name? Kylo suspected the same held true for him. There was no way out of the room short of breaking through one of the transparisteel windows and scaling the tower down. Kylo had no interest in doing this - not with the wind that would blow him away quickly unless he focused all of his energies in the Force into blocking it. And besides he would not run.

Instead he sank into a low crouch against the meditation chamber hidden from view of the door as he sought to regain some of the strength he had expended in his fight against his grandfather's panels. It had been a foolish thing. If it came to a fight he thought he would be unlikely to win it with the exhaustion that had overtaken him.

But did he want to win it?

He pushed his hands against his forehead to push away the feeling of waiting and the weight of _uncertainty._

* * *

 

_Ben was fourteen and staring into a burning fire in the hearth. It had been intended to be a getaway with both of his parents, he and Breha, and Luke. But Luke hadn't shown up, and in Luke's absence Ben's parents had fought again, and it had rained all day, leaving him and Breha stuck inside with their disagreements. And tonight the feeling of being courted in the Force could not be ignored._

_A small hand crept into his. "Watcha doin'?"_

_He turned, his younger sister was standing there in her nightclothes. She should be asleep. She'd been put to bed hours ago and his parents had followed not long after so that Ben had been left alone with his thoughts and the wind swirling around the cabin sounding mournful and not quite right._

_"Why are you out of bed?" He hissed before relenting somewhat and patting her brown hair, so much straighter than his own._

_Her lower lip trembled. "I had a bad dream."_

_Something fierce closed in around his heart. Ben had been burdened with terribly dark dreams for as long as he could remember. The brown eyes looking up at him didn't hold his sister's usual warmth and curiosity._

_"I'm sorry," he said instead, wrapping an arm around her and pulling her close. "What happened?"_

_"Darkness," Breha curled her head into his side smelling of baby lotion or shampoo._

_"It's not going to take you," Ben promised automatically. Adding with more purpose behind the words: "I won't let it."_

_"Do you have the dark dreams?"_

_Ben hesitated. They were dreams he'd stopped sharing with his mother because of the worried look she'd get. Even now the feel of Leia's concern through the Force was there committed to muscle memory. It was so familiar along with the sense that he would deeply ruin something if he wasn't careful._

_"Yeah," he admitted to her. "It's just dreams though." Even if he wasn't certain that was true. Would Breha know he was lying to her? "At least, I'm not going to let it be anything more."_

_This he said with more confidence. A young man who hadn't been tested, but who had the youth and inexperience to believe there was no way he could falter. Certainly not if it was his younger sister's safety at stake._

_"Come back to bed," he encouraged her, moving himself away from the fire, and for the first time that evening pulling his thoughts back outward instead of on the internal things he had been dwelling on since he'd been left alone._

_"I don't wanna."_

_"Come with me then," he offered, standing up and leaning down to pick her up. "You can climb in my bed. Together the darkness has no chance with us."_

_That felt obviously true._

_Breha submitted to the idea of sleep so long as someone came with her, and Ben dumped her in his bed, grinning at her giggles, and motioning for her to stay quiet so they didn't wake their parents, before he traded his tunic for a sleep shirt, and climbed in beside her. Breha turned to her side, her back easily snugged up against his side, and it wasn't moments after Ben used the Force to turn out the light that he could hear her breathing even out into the easy cadence of a sleeping preschooler.  His own sleep had been less simple that night. He might have been able to scare away Breha's darkness, but his own had lingered. When she'd disappeared a few years later, it had only intensified what was there._

* * *

 Kylo had wondered if they would figure out the mechanism, but they shared the same abilities after all. The door slid open; the voices familiar and hesitant as they stopped in the doorway. He could feel the exact moment they saw the destruction he had wrought. He wished he'd put his helmet back on before they'd come in.

There ought to be anger and frustration and pain that he could draw on, but instead there was something else that he couldn't identify - more worrisome than any of the other emotions. Fuck that. His objective had been to repair the ship and to figure out what had pulled him here. That had been the Force. He'd dreamed of this place as surely as he had once dreamed of darkness. He hadn't realized that there could be safety in the dark - hiding from people who would want things from you, expect things, or simply take…

He ignited his lightsaber as he stood up from behind the meditation chamber, drawing himself to his full height, helmetless, but it perhaps didn't matter: Two of the three had seen his face.  His sister was quick, but his brother was quicker, and the traitor came behind all three of them - with his own lightsaber -- Interesting.

Kylo hadn't moved though so neither had any of them. Instead they stood, blues and reds, all blending in with the purple of the lightsaber that belonged to the younger brother he hadn't asked for.

"What are you doing here?"

It was the scavenger's voice that broke the silence: _Breha's voice_.

"I could ask the same of you," he returned, gaze flickering to her. "Of all of you," he swept the room, but didn't move. He hadn't come to surrender, but there were three against one. He had killed more than this before, but his sister would have had training, and she'd been challenging enough in the first place, and part of him drew back from the idea of doing anything to her. Part of him had always drawn back from that idea because he'd been supposed to protect her (that had been Ben and it had been Ben's failure as well, but the instinct held firm).

He could feel the edge from FN2187, the traitor, interesting that he was still with Breha, and the tension from Breha. The brother, though - he was calm. Kylo turned to him, senses still stretched to Breha and the traitor in case they decided to move.

"You dreamed of this place too," Anakin was staring at him intently. "It called you here."

"What if it did?" Kylo returned, wondering how Anakin had known so easily. Unless; "That's why you're here."

"It's not my first visit," Anakin pointed out. "But yes, I dreamed of it, that's why I'm here."

"Grandfather is why we're all here," Breha's words were clipped.

Kylo brought his attention back to his sister. "So you know."

"Yeah, you messing around in my brain stirred up old memories long buried."

"I'd apologize, but you would have wanted to know. You were so interested in your family, so lonely where you were." His words sounded strange to him. Like they were coming from someone else, but not from Ben. And maybe that was part of why they sounded so strange. Because with her standing in front of him certain who she was and that the boy he had been long ago had once promised to her these words felt like a formal attempt to be 'nice' with nothing resembling real emotion behind them.

"You didn't do it to be kind," Breha snapped. "You did it because you've turned into a monster."

Anakin took a step forward, drawing Kylo's attention, but it wasn't an attack, just an attempt to get closer - perhaps a distraction from Breha's anger. He was still calm, but there was some uncertainty in his eyes. "You're the only one here. Just you and your shuttle."

"You knew I was here because of the shuttle," Kylo wanted to protest Breha's claims, they hurt more than he wanted to admit, perhaps because they felt true. Not because of all the things Kylo had done, but because of one thing Ben had done once. But it had been Ben and he was no longer Ben. Ben's obligations were not his. He tightened his jaw. Observation, not now. Focus. "And you can surely tell it's just me. So what are you waiting for? You nearly took me before. So did she. I'm not injured now, but with the three of you - well, one of you might die, but I'm sure you could defeat me."

"I don't want that," Anakin shook his head. "I want to figure out what you think you're doing. What you think you're accomplishing."

The traitor shifted, and Kylo could see a frown on the boy's face, but he didn't say anything.

"You want to sit down over tea and chat?" Kylo felt as if this might have been the most bizarre thing he'd heard yet today, and consider the day he'd had - that did seem to be saying something. So he threw that back to them - perhaps it would unbalance them as much as it had done him. "Grandfather was here today you know, or so he claimed."

This caught all of their attention and Anakin blinked. "You mean, here?"

"Yes, we had a conversation, even." His tone dripped smugness he did not feel.

"What did he say?" This was Breha who had stopped being angry at him for long enough to be genuinely curious. A flash of wide eyes and hair pulled back in two little buns on each side of her head, and Kylo couldn't begin to explain what the ghost had told him.

"Whatever it was, you didn't like it much, did you?" This was the first thing the traitor had said, and in speaking he caught the three siblings' attention. "That destruction of the panel over there is fresh. And it's the same thing you did on the _Finalizer_. So what did Grandpa say? Not what you were expecting? Tell you that you were carrying out his business all wrong?"

The source of the onslaught of questions was unexpected. What had FN2187 been told about the family?

"This is none of your business," Kylo sneered. Focus. He needed to focus. Kylo's grandfather had led him to Snoke. Snoke had been generous and kind in Kylo's desire to learn more. Kylo had been required to show his devotion, to work hard, to do what Snoke asked him to do. But Snoke had always given him the opportunity to learn more. Snoke had never turned down his request to do anything.

 _Until this trip_.

Snoke had tried to keep him from this trip. Snoke had given him a completely different mission and he had ended up here only because of his ship breaking down. Maybe only because of the Force. Snoke hadn't wanted him to come here. Snoke had given him pieces of information about Darth Vader's service in the Empire and allowed him to view and interact with Darth Vader's Sith holocron. Always it had been pieces of his grandfather's past, and the weakness that had finished his grandfather's service to the galaxy.

"He actually appeared to you," Anakin's voice pulled Kylo back to the room in front of him and away from the spinning thoughts that dangerously courted outright betrayal of the master he'd given his loyalty to. Anakin sounded jealous.

"He did," Kylo decided to play on the jealousy, maybe he could control Anakin's emotions while his own fell into a dangerous death spiral. "He came over all Force ghost. We had a conversation."

"What did he say?"

This was Breha, again, and Kylo hadn't wanted to speak so much of what he said. It would be smarter to just end this whole charade right now: stop the talking and move. He could take on Anakin. The space was small, it was unclear if that would be something that would work against him, or something that he could use. Probably he could use it, if he were careful, if he were _smart_.

Instead the words bubbled up, unbidden and unwanted, and lay in a mess between him and Ben's younger sister. "I lost you."

"You didn't," Breha countered.  

" _He_ did," Kylo regathered his thoughts, his focus on the scavenger, on Ben's sister, "You say I'm a monster, but _he_ was a monster. He just tried to do good, to do the right thing, all of the time, and he always messed it up. Everything he did was a weak mistake. He was the monster."

"He didn't lose me," Breha practically shouted. " _You_ didn't. I left. I went on my own. I made a choice because I thought that it was someone who was going to help. I didn't know, and it wasn't your fault. It was mine. I left, you didn't lose me. I didn't follow your instructions. Luke helped me with my memories, and it's still fuzzy sometimes, but that part is clear. There was a woman, she told me you needed me, and I went with her instead of staying where you told me to."

This had to be a lie. Kylo was aware that Anakin was moving to join the traitor, that neither had turned off their lightsabers. They were the backup in this arrangement, ready to jump in when needed. And they should have been needed now. He knew Breha thought he was a monster. Everything he'd just said should have made her attack him, and yet she was standing there, and she was… crying? And telling him she had left him.

He realized his heart was pounding, and it felt difficult to breathe, and somewhere in the back of his mind his grandfather's words were pounding a beat that was equal to that of his heart ' _Heal. Your. Family_ '. It was an impossible command, even if it were coming from the grandfather he'd tried so hard to become. Ben had torn them apart once through a moment of stupid arrogance. And Kylo was not without any understanding. His father's death would have torn them all again. He had thought it would put away all of Ben's weakness, reducing any opportunity to follow in his grandfather's footsteps. But he still couldn't breathe.

"That's a lie."

"It's not," Anakin spoke up. "And we both know it. If I can feel it, then surely you can."

"You weren't there, you aren't -" Kylo faltered.

"I wouldn't say he isn't your brother," the traitor piped up. "Cause he grins and there's no doubt he's a Solo."

Breha laughed, a thing that was half choked with a sob, but it cut through the tension anyway and Kylo looked over to see Anakin grinning.

"He's got a point," Anakin shrugged in an easy motion that pulled Ben's weakness to the front again.  Then he turned more serious. "Come home with us."

"It's not my home. She won't want me. Nobody will want me."

"And Snoke does?" FN2187 asked.

"He's teaching me… He's helping me."

"Does he know you're here?" Anakin had stepped forward. "He let you come here?"

"The ship broke down."

"But you dreamed of here."

"Snoke said it wasn't important." Kylo's words kept betraying him. He grasped for control once again. "This conversation isn't important. Let me go, and I won't tell anyone you were here and I won't injure of you. Just let me go." He sounded pleading to his own ears, and he swung his lightsaber as if to dismiss the sound of that pleading in a display of force, but no one seemed to take the bait.

"You said you talked to grandfather," Anakin had pushed past the jealousy, but there was still a sense of almost awe. "Do you know how many times I've wanted to? I got his name. I got the weight of carrying the expectations of taking the road he didn't take. Every question I ask myself, from the time I learned who Anakin Skywalker had become, they've all built my life. I had to come here in my galaxy to learn something about my grandfather.  And I think we're all here because he still had things to say. So what did he say? What would he say? You want to be as strong as him - what would grandfather tell you to do?"

* * *

 

_Strength had been the only thing he cared about the summer after Breha's abduction. He had practiced every drill he knew and begged Luke for more every time he visited Hosnian Prime. During the day he had practiced, it allowed him to avoid the weight of his parents blame. They never said it, just as they had never said that they were afraid of his abilities in the Force, but both things felt true in the same way it had felt true that if he and Breha were together they could fight the darkness._

_The darkness was still there -- ever present. He would dream of a night without stars, a darkness that would pool in and take the stars out one at a time until he would wake up screaming, the protocol droid Threepio, shuffling into his room to check on him, his mother following after, and Ben never wanting them to be there, because of feeling that he couldn't do it alone, and he should be able to. The darkness brought whispers of the ways he could have protected her if he'd only known. And he'd demanded –_ demanded _to be sent to Luke for training._

_Maybe by that point his parents had been so tired, so worried by the constant midnight waking, or the tendency he had to simply not sleep at all, stay up late into the night poking at the holonet, and trying to figure out what might have happened - who might have taken her. Slavers, probably._

_It had been the conclusion when no ransom had appeared within a few hours, and no sign could be found. In the months that followed, the conclusion became more undeniable. Slavers operated throughout the New Republic. While it was gutsy of them to steal a young girl from a market in Republic City, it was not unheard of, the authorities had told the family. They were very sorry, and they would keep their eyes open, but there was no further lead they could follow up on._

_His Mother had wept, her anguish tearing into Ben's soul, and he suspected she wasn't even aware of it. His Dad had said nothing - he didn't have to._

_Maybe they'd both been relieved when they'd sent him off to Luke's._

_Strength hadn't been at the heart of Luke's training. Everything that Ben had hoped to be able to do - stop others in the galaxy from ever having experienced what he had done - felt bogged in meditations and rote practice. Ben had struggled to relate to any of the other students, none of whom had known what he had known, and most of whom knew of his sister's story. The darkness still taunted him, but it had quietly become less fearful, and more of a place to find strength. The dreams began to terrify him less, perhaps because they left him with the sense that he might be able to do something - even in the midst of the training that was so lacking in fulfillment. His grandfather's identity had done nothing to change his relationship with the others, but it had changed everything else. That identity should have sent him spiraling, but instead it had provided hope. The voice that had kept pushing at him had been given an identity. Strength was being offered if he was willing to make the sacrifices necessary._

_Was he willing?_

_It had felt like strength to push past the feeling of how wrong it had seemed at first. It had felt like strength to exist in a deprivation chamber for weeks on end waiting for the appearance of the master that would guide him. It had felt like strength the first time he'd turned a lightsaber against someone he didn't know. It had to be strength to push into the darkness and use it to bring the galaxy order. Especially when the light still called._

* * *

There was a question of whom he would believe. Two grandfathers - two stories. One that would do anything for his family, and one whom would do anything to bring order to the galaxy. One that still stood on the edges of the light, and one that had dropped down into the shadows. Or maybe the more challenging story - that they had been, were even, the same man. The man who had dropped into the dark had used his wife's name as a security password and had a holo of son in his most private fortress. Snoke had used the one, and ignored the other. Had, in fact, wanted Kylo unaware of the existence of the other as anything other than a story of ruin.

And it had been ruin. It had been ruin. It had been ruin.

_Snoke is using you._

_Ren, I would never have led you to someone who would enslave you._

Ben he had been, Kylo he was, but who would he be?

Hux would call him any moment for a check-in. His ship would surely be repaired soon and he had a mission given by Snoke. Snoke who had taught him everything. Snoke who had not wanted him to come here. He should leave. But if he did would he have the freedom to figure out an of the questions?

Kylo had been who he was fighting to be. Kylo who knew the darkness held strength, and who had embraced it wholeheartedly. He had murdered his father and the darkness had been absolute, until his father had touched his cheeks, and the stars had blinked back in. The stars had blinked back in, and his next words were not as surprising as they might have been before.

"What would you do if I said I would go with you?"

FN2187 blinked. The traitor wasn't anticipating that maybe. It didn't fit in his narrative.

Breha's uncertainty flared although her facial expression stayed neutral.

Only Anakin smiled: "Say it's about time."

"But you can't keep your lightsaber," Breha pointed out. "And I'm not forgetting what I've seen. None of us are. And the Resistance considers you an enemy."

"Then we have to prove he isn't," Anakin countered. His words were addressed to Breha, but he was staring at Kylo. "You'll come with us then."

Maybe the darkness would always have stars.

He felt himself turning off his lightsaber, his eyes locked on the ice blue ones in front of him, who seemed to know better than any of the rest that he'd made that decision.

"There is a beacon on my shuttle," he spoke of the practical, or everything else would swirl in too much to be endured. "And Hux" - _Hux_ , there was a sharp pang of something he couldn't take time to unravel - "already knows where I am."

"Then we should get outta here before they decide you've had enough time for repairs and come looking for you." FN2187 urged and Kylo couldn't tell if he was afraid Kylo would change his mind. Or that he wouldn't.

"Let's get the others, and get back to the _Falcon_. Anything else we should know?" Anakin had stepped forward alert and watchful.

"I've got one too, but I think I know where it is, and we can dig it out before we leave here."

"You've got a tracker?" Breha's eyes widened.

"In case I become unconscious or something happens, and they need to find me easily. It was how I got off Starkiller."

"Maybe Mara can help us with that," Anakin suggested.

Mara Jade and Chewie. Two people that Kylo wasn't certain he wanted to see, but it felt inevitable, as inevitable as it seemed arriving on this planet in this moment and with this company felt as if it had been.

"You go first big guy," FN2187 said as he motioned towards the door. "We'll follow after, and no funny stuff."

Anakin had held out his hand for the lightsaber and Kylo handed it over with a hard swallow. He met his brother's eyes and wondered if Ben would have ever had such calm in a different galaxy where he kept his sister safe and never hid in the dark. He dropped the younger man's gaze and glanced back at the meditation chamber half expecting to see his grandfather staring at him. He couldn't see him, but that presence felt tangible again. He wanted to scream at it that Ben has messed things up and Kylo had messed things up and even if he chose Ren, he was likely to mess things up too.

The thought was so clear he knew it couldn't have been his own: _Of course you will. Those failures are not proof of your weakness, but will be the tools of your healing._

His helmet sat still at the edge of the mediation chamber and his gaze lingered on it long enough that Anakin's gaze followed his. For an instant, he wanted it, needed it even, and then he turned his back on it and towards the stairs.

The first step he took down the stairs was punctuated by was almost certainly his grandfather's voice in his head: _The Force will be with you, Ren_.

Observation as the world shattered out around him with a thousand shards of uncertainty: This felt obviously true.  

 


	11. Rey

When Rey had taken Anakin up on his proposal to come to Vjun she thought that it might mean something important for her - something that had to do with family, or her grandfather in some way. But this was not what she had anticipated at all. 

Granted, it did have to do with her family, and it certainly had to do with her grandfather, but not in the way she had expected and she wondered if it was something Anakin had foreseen before he came here. He'd told her only that he thought there was something there for them, but he hadn't said what. Had he known it would be their brother? Had he expected they would face him again? If he had, why hadn't he mentioned it? Granted if he had, if she were honest with herself, she knew that she might have said no. If she were honest, again, the only thing that kept her from doing so now was the look that would be on her mother's face if she knew that there was the possibility that Ben could have come home, and Rey had somehow messed it up. 

Despite this, Rey couldn't entirely believe that it was safe. She certainly couldn't find herself to trust Kylo even though his back was to them all, and they were all watching him. When she reached out into the Force she didn't sense any danger, and all she could sense from her younger brother was calm, and so Rey tried to settle her own emotional sense about everything that had happened. He had come with them willingly after all and so she just tightened her focus onto him determined not to miss it if he tried something. 

She could tell that Finn was anxious too, but none of them were saying anything, including Kylo Ren, and it was something she didn't entirely understand because she'd never thought of Kylo as one who could sit in silence. Certainly it didn't feel like he'd done that to her the times they'd been around each other. Then again if she thought back to the brother that she vaguely remembered he could sit in silence. Usually not around others, but around her certainly. She frowned, staring at the broad shoulders of his back in front of her. 

A roar from Chewie startled her away from thinking about Kylo Ren and she realized they had reached the bottom of the stairs. Chewie's bowcaster was up, and Mara's hand was on her blaster. 

"It's all right," Anakin's voice came from behind Rey, and while Kylo had stopped, causing all of them to stop, Anakin had pushed forward, his hand gently on Rey's shoulder as he came down, passing Ren and walking in front of him, putting himself between Chewie and Kylo. 

Probably, all things considered, this was wise. Rey couldn't help but think. She'd seen Chewie shoot at Kylo. She couldn't blame him for the motion, and half wished that he'd do so again even as she realized that he wouldn't. He might not even in self-defense. After all, this had been Han's son, and Chewie had taken care of them both, and those loyalties - the one to save Han, and save his son, even the one who had killed him - would collide with each other. And since killing Kylo Ren couldn't save Han, Rey suspected he'd find it very difficult to raise that bowcaster again -- for better or worse -- unless possibly in defense of someone else he felt he should protect.

She turned to Finn and their eyes met. Finn was asking a question with every motion he was making right now and the question in his eyes was clear - are you alright? 

But it wasn't a question she could answer at the moment. She didn't know if it was a question she'd be able to answer anytime soon. Anyway right now there were more important things. She stepped forward, nudging Kylo's shoulders. 

"Keep going," she told him tersely. "You're going to have to talk to him sometime, you might as well get it over with." 

If she hadn't known better, Kylo's shoulders had tensed and released in a sort of shutter. Barely there, and something she might have missed had she not been staring directly at them. Well, if he felt bad about it - let him. He ought to feel horrible about it. Any internal torment he had about facing Chewbacca had been well earned in Rey's opinion. Surprisingly though, she hadn't had to ask twice, and he shuffled forward after Anakin and towards Mara and Chewbacca. 

"Where did you find him?" Mara's question fell to the three of them, but she hadn't removed her hand from her blaster. 

"Grandfather's meditation chambers," Anakin responded simply. "He agreed to come with us." 

Rey decided at that moment that she never wanted to play sabaac against Mara Jade. The woman's face didn't move to show any surprise, shock, irritation, or any other emotion she might be feeling. "Why?" 

Rey glanced at her brother. He was standing in the center of a entrance, alongside Anakin, backed by Finn and herself, while Chewbacca and Mara flanked him from the front. And at his feet were the ruins of the statue of Darth Vader. Nobody jumped in to respond to Mara's question. For herself Rey knew it was because she didn't know Kylo's reasoning. She wasn't certain she trusted it because of this, and was half certain it was a trick and she kept waiting for something to prove her right. She knew this, and wished vaguely she'd been granted a less complicated family after all these years of waiting for them. 

She'd never thought of Kylo Ren as small, but right now he looked it. Although he was drawn to his full height, without the helmet, and lacking whatever presence he'd drawn on the Force to present, he seemed small. Or maybe it was just the height of what remained standing of Vader's statue that worked to make him seem that way. 

Mara's eyebrow raised and Chewie roared again, and Rey thought that Mara was going to ask the question again when finally Kylo looked away from her, and towards the statue.

"I thought Grandfather had," he stopped, drew in a breath, and then turned back to Mara with a familiar sort of defiance in his tone that lacked the uncertainty bordering on humility from just a moment before. "I saw Grandfather's ghost. I always thought he was leading me one place and I realized that it wasn't him who was leading me at all. I have information that I can give all of you about the First Order, about Snoke. I can help you if you want it." 

Chewie roared his discomfort with all of this, and Kylo looked up and over to him. It occurred to Rey then something she hadn't quite realized before. Kylo had always understood Chewie. He had on Starkiller and he did now. But of course he had, because Kylo had always been her brother, Ben. And they'd both understood Chewie from an early age. 

"My ship has a tracker on it. They know I'm here," he offered. "And I've a tracker on me. We should leave if we're going to before they send people to check on me." 

"Who has his lightsaber?" Mara's eyes moved to the rest of the group. 

"I do," Anakin didn't pull it out, but he'd attached the weapon to his belt on the opposite side of his own lightsaber. Mara's gaze fell on it. 

"How long before they are likely to send people to check on you?" 

Kylo glanced between Anakin and Mara. "Another half hour maybe. It's been some time since Hux - the General - contacted me. Snoke told him where I was supposed to be, and the tracker has shown him that I'm not there. My ship did have a malfunction and the droids are meant to be fixing it now." 

Rey wondered if Mara could tell if Kylo was telling the truth of not. It felt like something one could do with the Force, but it also felt like something one could use the Force to hide. So even if Mara could tell, Kylo might be able to mislead. 

"Then we don't have a lot of time to determine what we want to do, unless we want to be trying to fight our way out from underneath a Star Destroyer," Mara spoke the words crisply. "Do they know _we're_ here?" 

This question seemed to take Kylo by surprise. "I - Not that I'm aware of." 

"Then I think we leave your shuttle," Mara's decision was crisp and carried the authority of someone who had made calls like this before. 

"My droids know." 

This interruption from Kylo startled Rey and she took a step towards him, well, towards Anakin, but it also meant towards Kylo. 

"Your droids know?"

He turned to look at her. "They saw you enter here. They know that there were four people, and a wookiee. More than likely they'll put the pieces together. Or Hux will." 

Anakin was frowning. "Then we need to erase the droid's memories. Can they be wiped locally?" 

"They're standard First Order repair droids?" Finn spoke up now. "His shuttle probably doesn't have the interface, but if we brought them in here, we could probably force it. First Order stuff being built off of Empire stuff and all that. You're good with mechanics, between my knowledge and yours we probably could. You'll have to change the shuttle logs too though, probably." 

*We're really taking him with us after everything?* This question came from Chewbacca. 

Glancing at Kylo, Rey stepped around Anakin and Kylo, and walked straight to Chewbacca. "I know you don't want to," she told him. "I'm not sure I want to. But Leia - Mom, she'd want to see him. And…" 

*He killed Han.* The roar of Shyriiwook held anger and a residual deep pain. 

"I know." Kylo had stepped forward. " I remember. And I can't take it back even if I wanted to -"

" _Do_ you want to?" Rey snapped, before Chewie could roar a repetition of a similar question. "He was your father. _Our_ father, Ben. How the hell are any of us supposed to trust you after that? You've turned yourself over to come with us, but you have been fighting against us. You tried to kill me -" 

"I never tried to kill you," he sounded pained at this. "I _never_ tried to kill you. I wouldn't. You're - I swore to protect you and I couldn't, he couldn't. But I wouldn't kill you." 

"You realize you sound crazy with this 'he and I and whatever' nonsense?" Finn spoke up. "You're just one person, not five."

"We don't have time for this," Anakin interrupted. 

*Being certain he's not going to murder us all in our sleep might be something we have time for,* Chewie interrupted Anakin.

"Wookiee's got a point," Finn returned. "And he _did_ try to kill me - do you deny that?" 

Kylo was silent and finally shook his head. "No. You were a traitor to the cause." 

"Uh huh, and that makes you what now? Maybe that's what I'll start calling you." 

Kylo's jaw tensed and Rey could sense the rage boiling under the surface. It was bad that possibly she didn't care, but there was also some part of her that recognized Anakin's point. _If_ Kylo, no, her brother. She should start trying to think of him as her brother. Regardless, if he hadn't been lying then they had about thirty minutes before someone came to check on them. Maybe more like twenty-five now that they'd stood here arguing. 

"All right," she stepped forward, glaring at Kylo before glancing at Finn. 

"We can decide what name he's going by after we get away from a situation where the First Order may descend on us at any moment, because I don't know about the rest of you, but I don't really care to test the _Falcon_ 's shields against a super star destroyer. 

"They'll probably hold. At least to hear Dad tell it," Anakin replied flippantly, but he sobered as the words left his mouth and he frowned. "Finn, why don't you and I go take care of the droids."

"What if he's got security on the shuttle?" Finn questioned, his look at Kylo saying that he clearly expected there to be security and he expected to get hurt by it. 

"Then he'll tell us what we need to know. And if he needs to let us in then he'll do that first. In the meantime, Rey, Chewie, Mara, and Kylo can head back to the _Falcon_."

"What about you?" Rey asked, not certain she loved the idea of Finn and Anakin leaving them, but well aware that the plan made sense. Finn would be needed to deal with the First Order's droids and outside of Kylo, whom she wasn't certain she trusted to do it, she suspected Finn was the next best choice for the task. Add this to Anakin's understanding of machinery and it was a fine pair. She and Mara had the knowledge of the Force that would hopefully be enough to keep her brother under control if it were necessary. Add Chewbacca's strength and lack of trust, and the split made sense, except for the fact that going down the mountain was going to a fair amount of time and suddenly getting out of here before the First Order seemed unlikely, even without waiting for Anakin to pick them up. 

"There's a set of small shuttles in a shuttle bay," Mara said quietly. "We'll take one down to the _Falcon_ and Finn and Anakin will bring another down." 

"Are they still working?" Anakin's eyebrows raised. 

"They appear to be in good condition. If they aren't, then you'll contact us, and we'll come and pick you up when you're done, and then we'll set course out of here." 

Rey nodded. "Then we'd better get to it," she turned to her brother uncertain what to even call him, and finally setting on nothing, she stepped forward. "What do they need to know to get into your shuttle." 

He seemed subdued, even if she could feel a certain amount of rage still lingering under the surface. It felt dangerous, but not immediately so. It didn't give her a great deal of confidence in the idea that they weren't making a huge mistake, but she also didn't feel that it was directed _at_ her. And anyway, it seemed as if they'd set the coordinates and there was nothing to do but take the route, for bad or for good. "I'll let them in. There are a few codes you should know." 

"All right," Anakin stepped forward. "Let's get moving." 

There was the weird satisfaction and terror in a plan going precisely as they had lined out for once. Kylo had done what he'd said, telling the droids to not shoot, and that they were to take orders from FN2187 from here on out. She could tell Finn had taken no pleasure in being reminded of his stormtrooper code, but he hadn't commented on it. 

They had parted from Finn and Anakin and the two droids in the main entrance and Mara had led the way, followed by Kylo, and the rear brought up by Rey and Chewie down towards the bay that Mara had told them about. While it was clear it hadn't had maintenance in decades, the ships themselves looked better than most things Rey had seen on Jakku and she could tell that Mara had been correct about them being in good condition. She might not want to do off-planet travel with any of them, but they should make the flight down to the lower landing area where the _Falcon_ was waiting. 

They were small Imperial shuttles, the sort that would have moved supplies from one place to another, and the four of them were able to take place in the cockpit, even as Chewie grumbled about it being too small for a Wookiee. Rey had been able to sense her brother's comeback to this, but it had remained unsaid. 

She supposed she had to give him some credit there. As bad as things were, he wasn't making them worse. Although it really was the least that he could do under the circumstances, and it was a long way from enough. Mara had taken the pilot's seat and Rey had let her. She knew that it was possible that she could fly the shuttle, but Mara probably knew Imperial ones better than Rey did, and there was the fact that she didn't entirely trust anyone else to watch Kylo more than she trusted herself. She settled in across from him and stared him down. 

The fact that he refused to look her in the eyes would have been funny under other circumstances, but as it was, it only pinched, the pain of knowing who he was and what he had done bourne in his own lack of courage. She didn't take her eyes off of him as Mara ran through the system checks. Mara and Chewie ran an unspoken check of things between them and then they were taking off and out of the docking bay. 

As Rey watched Kylo's face it seemed to falter, and he leaned forward as if to put his head in his hands, before seeming to remember that he was being watched. His gaze darted up to hers, and then away again, and then he seemed to settle for staring at Mara's hands on the consoles. Rey didn't follow his gaze. Mara would have the ship and she had to have Kylo. Just in case. 

It was moments down to the lower docking bay. It was out in the open, so the ship landed not too far from the _Falcon_ and Rey felt a spike in Kylo as they did. It was something that almost alarmed her until she realized he hadn't moved and didn't have any intention of moving. It had just been an emotional spike. Something she couldn't typically pick up on from anyone. Why could she from him? 

_Because he's your brother, probably,_ her mind helpfully filled in. 

"Where's your tracker, Ben?" She broke the silence between the four of them by directly looking across at him. 

He flinched, and his gaze darted up, eyes heavy with an emotion Rey couldn't quite place. "It's in my right arm, and I'm not Ben." 

"I'm not calling you Kylo," she retorted. It was childish perhaps, but she refused to acknowledge that name. If it was what he'd wanted she wouldn't acknowledge it. And if it were something Snoke had given him, then she certainly didn't want to acknowledge it. 

"Ren, then," his words were just barely audible over the sound of the engines. Mara cut those and the four were left watching each other for an instant. 

"That's no better," Rey said. "Ren is still a piece of Kylo Ren."

"It's what Grandfather called me," for the first time her brother seemed willing to hold her gaze. "I don't know why. He said… it might fit." 

"We'll have the tools we need to get rid of it in the _Falcon_ ," Mara stood up, cutting the conversation and the power to the ship's engines short. She walked between Rey and Kylo and out to the main exit. Chewbacca grumbled, and followed her. 

"We'll talk about it later," Rey said. "You first." 

Kylo unbuckled his crash belt and moved, following after the Wookiee. 

Taking the tracker out wasn't easy, but fortunately Mara seemed willing to make it happen. Chewbacca had assisted with supplies and helpful commentary, while Rey watched to be certain Ren wasn't going to do something else. Why would their Grandfather have kept a portion of the name that Kylo Ren had supposedly taken for himself? Her brother might be right, maybe, that Ben didn't fit him anymore. It was difficult for Rey to reconcile him with the brother who had taken care of her and teased her from the depths of her memories. But she wasn't certain she liked Ren at all. 

"What will we do with it?" He asked, and there was a plaintive note to his voice. 

"I'm thinking throw it over the cliff," Mara responded, holding up the mechanical tracker with a pair of metal tweezers. "Take this," she handed him a bacta patch. "Chewie if you can help him with it." 

"I'll do it," Rey stepped up. As difficult as it was for her to approach him, she suspected it was even more difficult for Chewbacca. 

The expression of being lost lasted for only a moment as it played across his face, and it disappeared as she pressed the bacta patch down over the wound where the tracker had been removed. Ren hissed at that, and pressed his other hand down over the bacta patch. 

"You can't be attached to it," Rey looked up at him, her words quiet as Mara worked to put it in small bag.

"I'm not," he sneered. "It's just an electronic, and a nuisance at that." 

"They why are you so upset?" 

"I'm not upset." 

Rey rolled her eyes and stepped away from him. She had met five year olds with more maturity. "Have we heard from Anakin and Finn?" 

"Not yet," Mara shook her head. "I'm going to get rid of this. Chewie you run flight check. Ren - you're not intended to move from this spot at all. Rey's going to be here to be certain that happens." 

Rey could feel Ren's defensive protest in the Force, but once again he didn't say anything. Instead he seemed resigned to what he'd been told. It wasn't an emotion that felt typical from him and it left Rey still concerned that she didn't have any understanding of what he was here for. It was a question that Rey didn't have an answer to at all. Her brother had come with them, and had seemingly just given into the suggestion. It would have felt like a trap if he hadn't been broadcasting his emotions to them. Was it possible to broadcast emotions that were false? Probably. So maybe it was still a trap.

"Are you gonna watch me the entire time?" 

"Wouldn't you, if the situations were reversed?" She snapped back at him. 

He didn't have any response to this, instead seeming to settle into a quiet sulk. There was something she couldn't identify underneath it; a quiet worry that she couldn't pull a cause from. The feeling of it didn't do anything to calm her nerves and she was grateful when Anakin and Finn walked into the room again. 

"Mara here?" Finn asked as he glanced over suspiciously at Ren. "We need to get going if we're going to. It's been thirty minutes, and the storm may make it difficult to break atmosphere." 

"We're here," Mara's voice came from the door. "Chewbacca's starting the start-up sequence. I'll stay here with him. I think we have some conversations that need to happen." 

Rey looked over to Mara. She was standing in the door, her eyes steady on Ren. But if they were going to go out, then that was going to require someone to pilot. And under the circumstances someone ought to be in the turrets in case they were required to do any fighting on the way out. She stood up, one last look at Ren before she moved to the door.

"If you need anything, call," she told Mara as she moved past her. "Anakin, Finn, we need to get off this planet." 

"You think they'll be okay?" Finn asked as they moved down the small passage to the cockpit. 

"They'll be fine," Anakin reassured. 

Rey thought she could sense some worry in the Force. Mostly Anakin seemed to radiate confidence, which meant that it was a little unnerving to sense that, but when she glanced back, he seemed merely determined. 

"You want Finn and I on guns?" 

"No, I want you piloting again," Rey nodded her head toward the cockpit. "I'll take the bottom gun, Finn you take the top." 

"All right," Anakin moved past her. "Hopefully you guys have a boring trip up." 

Boring wasn't going to be a descriptor for the trip, even though nothing of any particular note happened. The weather itself on Vjun meant that every flash of light from lightning drew Rey's attention. Her constant stretching out in the Force trying to decide whether or not there was danger either from the space overhead or the enemy in the cargo hold did nothing to help her nerves. She suspected this was true for all of them as they moved steadily upwards. There were just too many pieces at stake and they were past the time limit that Ren had suspected they had. He might have miscalculated, or they could be walking into some sort of trap. 

When they jumped to hyperspace Rey couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief. It wasn't a full relief, because afterall Ren was still on this ship. Ren who had been involved in the murder of all of the Jedi at one point in time, Ren who had given her a good run for her money on Starkiller base, Ren who had killed their father. She drew some comfort from the fact that both she and Anakin had beaten him before - gotten away. But that had been in scenarios where there was something to get away too. This was a small ship and there was no place to run. 

Well, they would have to be on their guard - alert. She unstrapped the crash straps and pulled himself out of the seat and headed up the ladder and back to the cockpit. Anakin and Chewie were still there and Finn joined them slightly after. 

"We need to establish a watch." Rey noted without much preamble. 

"I was thinking the same," Anakin agreed. "Probably one of us trained in the use of the Force should be with him at all time."

*I can take a watch,* Chewie growled. 

"Yeah, I could too," Finn was not to be outdone. 

"Look, I'm not saying you guys can't," Anakin said. "But I also know that I had a difficult time fighting him. He doesn't have his lightsaber on him, but that doesn't mean he can't still make use of the Force. Unless you guys have a ysalamiri around, we can't keep him from using the Force, which puts anyone who isn't trained with a disadvantage. Even you Chewie," he looked over at the Wookiee.

"Well, I could be on watch same time as Rey," Finn said. "Be her backup, and you've been giving me some training. "Can't hurt." 

Anakin nodded. "That makes sense. Really someone should probably be in the cockpit at all times, cause if he were to overpower whomever was down there, his next stop might be the cockpit to return to the First Order. Chewie you'd make the most sense there. No one knows this ship better than you do." 

*You and Rey do,* Chewie countered this. 

"Yeah, but we've got to be on Kylo Ren watch," Rey said. "Anakin's right. Except maybe we just have two watches instead of three. There's only five of us after all. Chewie can stay in the cockpit. Finn and I will take a watch, and you and Mara take the other. And if Chewie needs a break then one of us can relieve him for a shift and there will always be two people on at any given time." 

"Makes sense." Finn nodded. 

"I'll go down and let Mara know what we're doing," Anakin agreed. "Since she's already there why don't you guys get some rest and we'll get this first one." 

Rey wanted to protest this, but really they hadn't slept much and Anakin had a point, so she nodded and with a glance at Finn she left the cockpit. Anakin departed to go down to find Mara and Rey headed back towards the bunks. 

They walked in silence until they reached the door and Rey stopped and turned around to look at Finn. 

"You all right?" He asked, putting a hand out and resting it on her shoulder. 

"This feels mad," Rey admitted. "I'm not certain why we brought him with us." 

"Doesn't really seem sane," Finn admitted and then he shrugged. "Look, there's four of us that got the Force now, and it's not like I've had a lot of training, but Anakin's good and you're even better than you were, and I've had a bit now. Mara seems like she's got her stuff sorted too. That's four of us, against one guy that doesn't even have his lightsaber." 

"But what are we doing next?" Rey looked up at him. "Where are we taking him? Back to the Resistance? We can't do that. If he escaped, he'd know where the Resistance base was, and they'd have to move again." 

"Don't they already know that?" 

"Do they?" Rey sighed. "I don't know. Mom will want to see him, but right now I'm afraid it's all a trap that he's trying to get to her too. I mean, Dad obviously walked out there thinking he'd be able to reach him." 

Finn's jaw worked as he seemed to consider responses to this. "What about Luke?" 

"He's not going to want to see Luke," Rey responded instantaneously. 

"Well, it's not really about what he wants is it?" Finn countered. "It's about what we need to have happen for us to know he's not a risk, or at least he's not a tremendous risk. Not sure I'll ever trust him after what I've seen him do." There was a pause and he added: "Look, sorry, I know he's your brother."

"He is and he isn't," Rey frowned. "I mean, I know he was. I have memories of Ben. They're good ones. He was always a kind brother. He took care of me. I guess he's still in there, but he didn't want to be called Ben. And he still killed his Dad. _Our_ Dad. We were both there and we both saw that. Anakin wasn't there, maybe it's easier for him to reconcile that, but I can't quite seem to." She looked over and shrugged. "I guess that's just a long way of saying it's okay if you can't trust him, because I'm not certain I will be able to either." 

Finn's hand tightened on her shoulder and then released. "We should get some rest," he suggested. "We don't want to watch him while we're tired." 

Rey wondered if she'd be able to fall asleep at all. All the nights she'd slept in the deserts of Jakku, she'd had plenty of practice sleeping in situations where she might need to be woke up at any moment, where she was always half alert, even when sleeping - knowing that there were things that were dangerous to her out there - and this wasn't so much different from that. 

"Hey," Finn reached out again for her hand this time and she let him wrap around it. 

At one point she would have fought it, but somehow recently he kept reaching for her hand, and she kept allowing it. Maybe even more than that, she found herself wanting him to do so, and gaining a rush of strength when he did. Sure she could run without him holding her hand, but she might run farther, faster, and longer when he was holding it - metaphorically speaking anyway. Her eyes dropped to their connected hands and she squeezed it gently. 

"When I was looking for my family, I was looking for… something else," she admitted softly. It was something she hadn't admitted to anyone, and felt guilty admitting to Finn. Finn who didn't have any idea who his family was. And she knew it was a question that weighed on him like it had once weighed on her. She squeezed his hand again, hoping he wouldn't take it as a complaint. It wasn't… exactly. 

"You were looking for people who cared about each other," Finn nodded. "Mom and Dad, and maybe siblings. A place you belonged and people cared about knowing you." 

Rey looked up. He was staring at her with warm eyes and she nodded, relief in realizing he knew exactly what she meant. "I know I've got Mom, still." 

"You're calling her Mom," Finn offered with a grin. 

Rey blinked at his observation, the memory of being back at the base and him saying that she didn't refer to them that way, and that he would, pricking in her memory. She offered a small smile. "Yeah, I guess I am." 

"That's something," he squeezed her hand again. 

"I guess I've got Anakin too," she admitted. "He's my brother." 

"Yep, and I bet he's more like what you remember Ben being like," Finn suggested. 

"He is," Rey nodded. Although it wasn't exact. Ben and Anakin had very different personalities. But there was a warmth and concern in Anakin that reflected the same as her very faint memories of being a young girl with an older brother. 

"Do you think he's genuine, Finn?" Rey's voice had a plaintive tone that she didn't care for. It felt like a little girl, and it wasn't a sound she heard from herself very often. Maybe because that little girl had grown into a woman who couldn't afford that sort of emotional questioning. She'd had to hope constantly, but fight tenaciously simply to be allowed to survive on the vast sand dunes of Jakku. And she had. Maybe this wasn't so different - the sand dunes were different, but the hope was the same. The hope that maybe Ren - _Ben_ \- could come back and be some form of her brother. 

Finn's eyebrows came together as he seemed to consider his answer carefully. "I don't know, Rey," he sighed. "I really don't. I wish I could tell you yes, I really do." 

"I know you do," the words came out in a soft whoosh, because she did believe that. He wanted it to be true, because he thought she wanted it to be true. And maybe she did. Even if any hope of having the dream of the family she wanted had died on Starkiller base.

He reached a hand up and touched her face. They were feather light touches against her jawline and she found herself looking up into his eyes once again at the touch. "Whatever he is, I'm here for you, all right?" 

Rey blinked and nodded. "All right." 

"We should get rest," he traced her cheek with his thumb for an instant before dropping his hand and seeming to straighten up again. "We'll solve everything better with some sleep." 

Rest wasn't particularly easy to come by, but the truth was that Rey was used to sleeping under circumstances where things weren't entirely safe so she did dose off eventually. When she woke up, it was with a knock outside the door. The initial panic that set in with it quickly evaporated as she realized it was just Finn. She got up, washed her face off, and then exited her room, heading for the table in the main area of the ship. Anakin was there with Finn, and the two of them looked up. 

"How he's been?" 

"He's asleep right now, at least I think he is. Mara thought she'd stay down with him while the three of us talked." 

"About what we're doing next?" Rey queried as she joined Finn. 

"Yeah, exactly," Anakin sighed. "Cause we can't just go around the galaxy aimlessly. We need to give Chewie a better direction. We have the information we gained from the temple on Vjun, and then we have Ren. And we can't just sit on either of those things."

"They're also kinda different directions aren't they?" Finn asked. "I mean, the stuff on Vjun - we don't even know what that means right? So, we've got to take the time to figure it out. And to do that we can't be babysitting loyalties uncertain patricidal Dark Side guy." He winced and looked over at Rey. "Sorry I didn't mean -"

"No, Finn's right," Rey was pretty certain emotions were for a time that wasn't right now. Right now they just needed to deal with the task in front of them and that was something Jakku had uniquely prepared her for - or so she'd thought. But why was it so difficult to come up with someway to move forward at the moment? "Ren being there and now being here has made it difficult to know how to move forward and we can't babysit him forever." 

"We couldn't leave him there either," Anakin said. "He faltered enough to come with us. Whatever happened to him, and he hasn't said a word, but whatever it was - it hit him hard enough to get him to agree to come. We couldn't not take advantage of that. If we can get him to turn against the First Order and Snoke - I mean _actively_? That could give us so much information that the Resistance could really use right now." 

"Yeah, but how are we gonna know that information is true? What if he's just selling us something to get into the Resistance or to get information about us. I've seen him order the death of entire villages. Beings who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. We didn't ask him to give up anything that might not have already been a plan on his end. He could be lying, in fact, chances are strong that he probably is." Finn's words were quietly determined. "Look, I know he's your brother, and I don't want to say that you aren't looking at him rationally because of that, but I also don't really want to die." 

"I think that last bit describes all of us," Anakin quipped as his lips turned up in a half grin. "Nevertheless, we've got him. And he was there because of a dream. _We_ were there because of the dream. I say we trust the Force working through this one." 

"Force can still end us dead," Finn stated, but he leaned forward. "You know where Luke is," he turned to Rey. 

"I do, but I don't know if it's a good idea to go there. And I'm not sure it's a good idea to go back to the resistance. He already killed Dad. If Finn is right, and this is some sort of trick, then it could be a masquerade to try to get close to kill either Luke, or Mom. I couldn't live with myself if that happened. Not to mention that Luke is still somewhat under hiding from the Order, and we know that Ren was seeking the map. What better way to get around not having a map, not having had access to seeing the map, than to pull this 'I've repented thing', take us for a bunch of fools, and have us lead him straight to Luke. In some ways I'd rather go to Mom because I think he's less likely to be trying that trick to get to her. She's more accessible, in general, and in particular the First Order has intelligence on the Resistance almost certainly." 

"So we don't go to Luke," Anakin offered. "I was going to suggest going there to sort out the information from Vjun, but maybe that's not the best idea after all. Because you've got a good point there."

"But Mom's not going to be able to help us with Vjun, and it still feels dangerous taking him back to the Resistance. If for no other reason than there's a lot of people that aren't mom there, and they might make things worse." 

Finn turned his head to look at her. "Make things worse?" 

Rey hesitated, but the thought had been clawing at her mind since they had brought Ren with them. It was sitting in the middle of the ridiculous, impossible hope that there was sincerity in what Ren was offering. "I mean, if we take Kylo Ren back to the Resistance military, they're going to want to put him behind bars." 

"That's a pointless thing to do to a Force user unless they're better prepared to keep Jedi in a cage than most," Anakin pointed out. "I've escaped local prisons before, and it's less difficult than you might think." 

"I'm sure they'd have something," Rey shook her head. "But that's kind of not the point. I mean, it is, but the point is, if he's legit. If what he is saying is true, and there is some sort of repentance there…" Saying all of these words out loud felt even more ridiculous than thinking them in her head, but she plunged on. "Then putting him behind bars isn't likely to help with that. And it also means that he can't help us nearly as easily." 

"So we take things into our own hands, is what you're saying," Finn raised an eyebrow. 

"It's not like that isn't always what I've done," Rey shifted in her seat uncomfortably. "But yeah, that's more or less what I'm saying. We should talk to Mara, but we find someplace that's not any of these places and we contact people, we talk to Ren, we try to sort through this information we gathered, and we make a more informed decision after we know more. Like for instance maybe a real conversation with Ren." 

"It makes sense," Finn responded after a moment's thought. 

Rey turned to look at Anakin. "What are you thinking?"

"I'm thinking you're right, I'm just trying to figure out where we go. If this were my galaxy..." Anakin trailed off, frowning. 

"You know where you'd go," Finn finished the sentence. 

Anakin looked between the two of them and nodded. "I do, but I don't know what that situation is here, so I might need to do some research, see what Mara has to say about it, because it might not be an option in this galaxy. But if it's anything like home, then we might be able to utilize it." 

"You're very mysterious," Finn deadpanned. "Is that a Solo thing?" 

"I'm never mysterious," Rey chided him. 

"No, never even a little bit," Finn turned around to look at her but he was grinning, teasing her. 

Rey shook her head, uncertain what she'd been mysterious about recently from Finn's perspective, but she wasn't going to get bogged down with that right now. "So you're going to talk to Mara about that then?" 

"Yeah, I can do that," Anakin stood-up. "In the meantime, maybe you can get something out of Ren. I don't think he's said more than ten words to Mara or I." 

"I'll try," Rey frowned. She didn't know what to say to him. A goodly portion of her wanted to just yell at him, but she wasn't certain it would be helpful. Of course if he was just pulling one over all of them, then it probably wouldn't be _harmful_ exactly. 

"I bet you can figure it out," Anakin offered, along with a tight smile. "I'm going to check with Chewie. Let Mara know I'm in the cockpit." 

Rey nodded as he headed off and she turned to Finn. "You maybe should go to the galley and pull out some rations and water."

"For Kylo too?" 

"Well that's what I was thinking. I know I'm hungry, and I don't know the last time he would have eaten anything. We'll all be in a better mood if we're not starving."

"Got it." 

As he headed to the galley Rey watched him go. She needed to go and tell Mara that Anakin was in the cockpit and needed to talk to her. She needed to go and take over the watch. She pushed herself to her feet and moved forward. There were a thousand questions in her mind, and she still had no particular feeling as to whether Ren was genuine or not, but the only way out was through and it was hardly the first time Rey had found herself in that position. 

She found them in the cargo hold. Ren seemed to have taken up a spot on the floor beside five empty crates, and he looked up at her when she came in. His eyes seemed to bore into her under dark eyebrows. He looked younger, like he had when she'd first seen him after he'd taken his mask off. It occurred to him that no one knew what Kylo Ren looked like. If he came back to the Resistance as Ben Solo, rediscovered alive somewhere… It was a thought she could chase later after they'd decided what they were doing and where they were going. 

Mara left the two of them and Rey crossed her arms over her chest as she watched him. He looked away, unwilling to say even hello it seemed, so she waited. Eventually Finn would come in with the food, maybe she'd make him say something to her before she'd give him rations. She sighed internally at that thought - it wasn't really that helpful of one. It was probably childish and immature of her to even consider. Then again, it wasn't as if he deserved really good treatment, honestly. If the situations had been reversed she had no doubt that she would have been in actual chains. They'd left him mostly free, just quarantined to one part of the ship and watched constantly.

She'd stood in place for several moments when he finally looked up at her again. 

"You can sit, you know," he offered, his voice low. "You'll get tired." 

"If I do, I will," she returned. 

He shrugged, and looked away again. 

Rey swallowed a sigh. "You don't have any right to be the way you are right now. You're hardly being wronged here. If anything we ought to turn you over to the Resistance or the Republic courts." 

He barked a laugh, a harsh sound that echoed somewhat in the empty room. "You think the Republic courts could do anything to me?" 

"Well your First Order kind of made it impossible to ignore the fact that you exist," Rey snapped. "So yeah, I think they might do something." 

"But they don't," he looked up at her more intensely. "That's the whole point. The Republic has no teeth and it never has, and the galaxy suffers as a whole. What happened to you? That was because of a lack of any real security from the Republic." 

"You don't know what happened to me." 

"You were kidnapped from a public market place." 

"I went with someone who said that you were waiting for me."

He blinked. "Why?" 

"Because I trusted her. Because she said you'd solved the trouble and wanted me to meet some people. Because why I wouldn't I?"

"That's still a kidnapping," he persisted, and then he shook his head. "A total stranger Breha?" 

"She felt like the truth," Rey snapped back. 

"She was Force sensitive," this understanding dawned on him and he shifted, moving to his feet. 

"Don't you dare come any closer to me," she held up a hand and he paused, still on his feet and still staring at her. 

"Right," he muttered. "Sorry." 

It was a bizarre word to hear from his lips, and she frowned, maybe she'd been too harsh, but she wanted to be able to see him, stop him if she needed to and she couldn't do that if he was too close. 

"I just - don't know why you're here, and until I do, you need to stay over there," she offered the explanation even as she wondered at herself for doing so. She didn't need to be. 

"It's fine," he muttered, pressing his lips together. His jaw was set hard, and then he turned back away. His stance felt awkward, but he didn't move. "She was Force sensitive though," he tilted his head back to listen over his shoulder. "Your kidnapper." 

For a moment Rey wasn't certain she wanted to go into the details. She'd just barely gotten used to some of it herself. It had been a simple mistake to make at six years old. Of course she knew not to go off with people, and if someone had strictly asked her to move or to meet Ben at another location she wouldn't have done so. But this woman had been different. She'd seemed like a relative or a friend somehow and she'd been so certain that Ben had sent her, and Rey had been certain as well. 

"Breha…?" He frowned as if he expected her to continue. 

She snapped back. "It's Rey." 

He laughed. 

It was her turn to blink at him. His lips had turned up into a grin that wasn't entirely unlike Anakin's, and for the first time she realized that he looked like their father. Just a little bit. "What's so funny?" 

"We both have strong opinions about our names," he responded quietly, another chuckle let out in a breath of air. 

When he turned like this it was difficult to believe that he was the same man who had killed his own father, _her_ father. He was so soft looking, gentle almost, it seemed like a contradiction and it had from the first moment that she'd seen him unmasked. 

"I just haven't been Breha for a long time," she offered trying to keep the defensiveness out of her tone and somewhat failing. 

"I know." 

"Luke believes she blocked things," Rey found herself saying, maybe to avoid this other conversation about names. "In the Force. She's the reason I couldn't remember who I was or where I was from. I had vague inclinations of a family that would return for me, maybe left on purpose to keep me from totally giving up on Jakku, but not enough that I could share with anyone." 

"She led you away purposefully." 

Rey nodded. It was the best that she and Luke had been able to unfold in the memories. Once Kylo had pressed past those barriers in the Force, pieces had began to float back in. At first just the Force, the knowing how to use it. And then her mother, and then with Luke more detail, carefully and sometimes painfully, but the pieces had been there, buried or walled up for years. 

"Why?" 

The answer to this question stuck in her throat. Neither she, nor Luke, had been able to come up with an answer. Kidnapping the child of a senator made sense. Kidnapping the Force sensitive child of a senator made sense - particularly if you were going to use them in some way. But she had been abandoned and they'd never returned. "Maybe they intended to come back and use me, but something happened and they didn't or couldn't," she shrugged. 

"You don't know." 

She looked up at him and shook her head wordlessly. 

The only noise was the consistent thrum of the engines of the _Falcon_ as they moved through hyperspace. At some point Finn would show up with food, and Rey was hungry enough to wish him moving a little bit faster. Ben had always been older and taller than her, so perhaps it wasn't that odd to see him so much older and taller now. But when she looked at the man in front of her she couldn't entirely see the boy she remembered. Where was Finn with the food? 

"Why are you here?" She asked him finally.

He swallowed, staring off into the distance. 

Maybe his lack of response should have irritated her, or worried her. Maybe it should have made her more alarmed. But it also seemed like if this were a trap, he would have an answer to that question, because it felt like the one question that should be obvious that it would have been asked from the beginning. A well rehearsed answer that would alleviate any suspicion as to his motives. This was the man who had stood in front of her utterly confident in his position as he tried to take the map from her mind. She watched him, which he had to know she was doing but he didn't say anything, even though his jaw tightened slightly. 

If she had to guess, Rey would say that he didn't know what he was doing there and that he was as uncertain about his decision as she was about his making it. Maybe that shouldn't have been comforting, but somehow it was. It might indicate unpredictability, but maybe at least it indicated there was no specific plan to turn against her or the others. 

"Finn's bringing food," she finally spoke into the silence. "You've got to be hungry. It's just proteins and ship's rations, but it's better than nothing." 

Ren looked over at her then, finally. It seemed like he might be about to say something and then he thought better of it and just nodded. "I haven't eaten since... " he paused, seeming to search his memories. "I don't really know actually." 

"Then we'll get you food," Rey thought she could sense Finn through the door. "Then we can figure out what's what." 

It wasn't a real answer to the question of their destination, but it was an immediate step forward, and for the moment, it would have to do.


	12. Anakin

"It certainly isn't any place they would think to look for us." 

It was unclear from her tone whether Mara seemed to consider this a blessing or a curse. But Anakin gave her the space to think through his suggestion, glancing over at Chewie as he did. The Wookiee had settled into his co-pilot's seat, and was leaned back in such a way that Anakin suspected that he'd been sleeping not long before. 

Anakin had interrupted the both of them with his idea of where they could go next even though he was uncertain if it would work. It would have made sense at home, but they were a long way from Anakin's home and he knew that his parents here had not been married under the same circumstances as they had been at home. Any Jedi schooling had been completely different than what he was familiar with, and there was a good chance that just like he and Jacen and Jaina didn't exist here his friend wouldn't exist here either. And even if she did, her life experience, and the experience of the planet she lived on would be completely different. Still, it had been the first place he'd thought of, and he trusted Mara's judgment on the matter.

"I can put a call in," Mara surprised Anakin with her words. "I think it's a bad idea to go in without any conversation with the Queen mother. They're very closed off and I can't imagine they'd take kindly to us bringing ourselves into the system and hiding out there." 

"I'm open to other suggestions," Anakin begun. 

"No, it's a good idea," Mara interrupted. "And I suspect Tenel Ka will be more open to it than her mother would have been as queen." 

Anakin blinked, a warm excitement spreading through him even though he realized that she, like everyone else, wouldn't know him. "You mean Tenel Ka exists in this galaxy?" 

Mara raised an eyebrow. "If you mean Tenel Ka Djo, the queen mother of the Hapes Consortium, yes." 

"She's not a queen mother at home, she's a Jedi," Anakin murmured as he took this in. It hadn't been what he had expected, hadn't he just told himself that likely she wouldn't exist in this galaxy? And yet she did - would she look the same and be the same person, or would she be a very different person with the same name and parents. 

"Well, here she is the queen mother. Her mother died a few years ago." Mara tilted her head quizzically, guessing: "You know her." 

Anakin nodded. "We all trained together and worked together. I was -" he stopped. Everything that had happened since he arrived here had pushed Myrkr to the back of his mind. But Tenel Ka had been there with him and Jacen and Jaina. The last time he'd seen her, assuming that it was her at all, had been in the middle of a war zone. He hoped, a vague momentary thought, that she'd made it out all right. He had no way of knowing this of course, but he could still hope. "We were on a mission together at home, before I came here," he shrugged off the emotion of the memory. "But she won't know me here anymore than you do or Mom does, so that may not be a helpful point. But if you know her?" This thought occurred to him almost as a whim, but as soon as he asked the question he knew the answer was yes. 

Mara ignored the question, maybe in so doing answering the question without answering it. "You should get some rest. I'll put the call in, and if it comes back affirmative, Chewie can program the coordinates to the Hapes Consortium." 

Anakin stood up and then looked back at her. "What about Uncle Luke? Can we get ahold of him there?" 

"I'll contact him." 

Anakin blinked at this information, his brows furrowing together. "Have you been able to contact him all this time?" 

Mara's green eyes met his, but she once again didn't respond to his question. "I'm not certain it's a good idea to bring him and Ren to the same place." 

"I'm not certain it is either, but at the same time I feel as if we need him in order to be able to make any headway on what Rey and I found." Anakin pushed down the irritation of thinking that Mara might have known where Luke was the entire time that everyone else was trying to find him. Then again, of course she might have. Mara could keep secrets, and she obviously had some sort of relationship with his Uncle in this galaxy as well. So of course she might have. 

"I'll do it after we get to Hapes," Mara amended her original statement to hold more details. "After we've had a chance to really understand what Ren is doing. Assuming we can figure that out in a day or so. We may need to split up to accomplish what is necessary." 

"I think Ren holds a key," Anakin suggested this as he put his hand on the door. "It may be crazy, but I dreamed of Vjun - he dreamed of Vjun - and I knew there was something there that had to do with my grandfather that might be important. He had the same thought. He idolizes Darth Vader… what if he's what we went for?" 

Chewie roared a protest of the idea that Ren was going to be important in some way, but Mara merely stood up also. 

"You're a lot like your Uncle with your belief," Mara put a hand on his shoulder. "But people don't always agree with being used of tools of destiny, and the destiny does not always swing in favor of the light." 

"I know that," Anakin responded, feeling chided for what he'd said, but he also didn't feel as if it were wrong. Maybe it wouldn't work in their favor, but maybe that wasn't the point either. "I agree with waiting, but we're going to need Uncle Luke sooner rather than later, and we can't leave Ren with people who don't have the Force - that's its own set of foolishness." 

*And if he's here to get to Luke?* Chewie rumbled. 

Anakin didn't have an answer for that one. He was working largely off of instinct at this point, which wasn't to say that he hadn't done his fair share of over-thinking on the topic -- he almost certainly had. Yet right now gut and instinct didn't feel like a terrible way to be making decisions. In the absence of so much that he knew and understood well, trusting the Force and what he had learned about human behavior in his own galaxy to lead him forward might just be the only sensible thing to do.

When he finally opened his mouth it was to glance between Mara and Chewie as he spoke. "I think we have to accept that we don't know why he came with us. I think he's genuine about having wanted to, whether that's because he's set up something to turn against us, or because he's genuinely repentant of what he's done in the past - I don't know. And even if it's the later, it isn't going to be easy. There's a lot of people that wouldn't believe him, and ultimately... " 

Anakin knew that if people knew that this was Kylo Ren - with them - someone who had murdered people as a part of the First Order? It wouldn't matter what repentance he offered up, it wouldn't be enough. Legally… "That's something to deal with when we get to it I think." 

"Right now, we have our next steps," Mara changed the subject. "I'll contact Hapes - you go ahead and get some rest and we'll talk about this more at the next shift." 

Anakin slept, but fitfully. There were dreams that pressed against the edges of his consciousness - demanding his attention just enough to keep him from fully committing to the rest that his body definitely needed. 

When he woke up several hours later in an otherwise dark room, he pressed his hands to his forehead as if attempting to pull the threads of the memory of the dreams to the surface once again. But it was almost impossible to do so. He knew they'd involved Ren, and a scarred man that Anakin somehow knew was the Supreme Leader that Ren had followed. Anything more specific alluded his grasp however remaining just in the shadows and continually out of reach. He took two deep breaths to calm himself. It wasn't an immediate bad or dangerous sense that he got about the dreams, more just frustration at not being able to pull more about them to the forefront of his memories and review them. 

He looked at the chronometer. Technically his rest shift wasn't up, but he knew he couldn't sleep, so he pulled himself out of the bunk and washed his face and his hair. He pulled on a new shirt, his jacket, his lightsaber at his hip, and he left the bunk to make his way to the cargo hold. On the way he stopped to start a pot of caf, pouring two cups before he continued on to where he knew Ren was being kept and Finn and Rey were watching him. 

"Hey there," Finn greeted him when he slid open the door. 

Ren was lying down on the floor on a mattress that had been rolled out for him earlier. The very posture spoke vulnerability, which was interesting. Rey was staring at him, although she turned her head when she sensed Anakin coming in. Ren must have also sensed him for he opened his eyes and watched him without moving his body further. 

"You're supposed to be resting," Rey protested in greeting. 

"Yeah, I know, but I couldn't. I'm too awake. I brought Ren some caf if he wants it and if you guys want a short break I'll watch for a bit." 

Rey looked as if she was about to protest, but Finn shrugged. "We could go get some food. Might be good. You hungry Anakin?" 

"Yeah, that'd be nice, thanks. There's more caf in the galley if you want it." 

Rey seemed reluctant to leave him alone, but Anakin gave her a reassuring smile. It wasn't that Ren couldn't do something. Anakin wasn't arrogant enough to assume that he'd be able to best Ren under all circumstances. If anything, he wondered if the opposite wasn't true. He'd made a getaway before, but it had been with help and the ability to simply leave. That wasn't something he would have right now. 

Still, his gut said this would be fine. If he was wrong, well, he was wrong. 

Rey glanced between Ren and Anakin, but she followed Finn out and Anakin watched the door shut behind them. 

"You're the only one of all of them who trusts me." 

Anakin was pulled out of his thoughts by Ren's voice. 

His older brother had pulled himself to a sitting position on the mattress, his back against the bulkheads, and he wrapped a shawl around his shoulders more tightly. Anakin suspected that the bulkhead was cold. The cargo hold was usually chilly enough even when you didn't have your back pressed up against the metal lining the walls. 

He stepped forward, offering the cup of caf to Ren. The other looked up at him, seemed to war with something in himself, and then he reached up to took the cup. 

"Should I not?" Anakin sat down himself. Cross-legged on the uneven flooring, he stared Ren directly in the eyes. 

"It's foolish."

"If it's foolish to believe that you could come back to the family, then it's foolish."

"I tried to kill you. You tried to kill me for that matter."

"But I didn't," Anakin leaned forward. "And I'm glad I didn't." 

"Even though I killed Han?" 

A shadow crossed Anakin's face. "Yeah even though." It was the truth, although there was certainly a portion of him that said he was wrong about that. 

A silence fell between them, and Anakin almost felt as if they were each sizing the other up, or maybe Ren was sizing him up. For a moment, Anakin felt as if he ought to posture - do something to make himself seem more competent and less vulnerable than he felt at the moment. But that feeling passed. What good would it do in the end? Ren had an idea of how he fought already, and right now Anakin sensed that what he needed to do was not build up walls, but to tear them down. He had no idea how to do that, he never had, but somehow he'd managed when he'd been trekking across Yavin IV with a Yuuzhan Vong shamed warrior. He'd managed to figure it out with Tahiri when everyone else wasn't certain what had happened to her in Yuuzhan Vong custody. And this was just another task in front of him where it was necessary - essential even. 

"I can almost see Jacen in your face." He offered mildly, taking a sip of the caf he'd brought in with him.

Ren didn't say anything and Anakin wondered if he'd heard him, or if he just was ignoring him. 

Obviously his lack of knowing what he was doing was going well. 

"He doesn't have scars though. At least not like yours," Anakin took another sip of the caf mostly because it was something to do..

"He's your… brother?" Ren finally spoke. And Anakin supposed it was something. It wasn't as if he'd been particularly forthcoming with all of the family relationships when they'd been duelling it out previously. 

"Yeah," Anakin put his elbows on his knees and leaned forward. "He's my brother. I've got a sister too, Jaina. They're twins. They're older than me - about Rey's age I guess. Or maybe they'd be a bit older if they'd been born in this timeline…" Anakin tried to do the math in his head. "Not certain on that one. You guys are further apart than we are, but she wouldn't be so much older I don't think in my galaxy."

"You're the youngest everywhere," Ren stated wryly.

"Youngest, but not least experienced," Anakin threw back, his own lips curving into a smile. "Cause I kinda kicked your ass." 

Ren looked over darkly. "I would have beat you if you hadn't run away." 

"I wouldn't have run away if I hadn't needed to look out for other people," Anakin shrugged. "But I also have tons of battle hours so I wouldn't be so sure of that. Anyway - that's not the point, exactly. I could probably beat Jacen too." 

Ren's eyebrow raised. "I feel as if I should defend him since he is not here to defend himself." 

That statement spread a smile across Anakin's face, a lopsided genuine grin as he stretched his legs out in front of him. "Go for it. I can't say whether he'd appreciate it or not." 

"Coming from me you mean." Ren took a sip of the caf and moved to the edge of the mattress, placing the cup on the floor in front of it. 

It hadn't been exactly what Anakin had meant, but it was close enough. Jacen had been a mystery to Anakin recently and really the last real conversation they'd shared had been an argument and Jacen had accused him of being willing to sacrifice anything for the cause. The accusation stung even now, and Anakin wondered if there was some of that here. Although he wasn't certain what his 'cause' was if that was the case. Saving Ren? It wasn't as if Anakin had any relationship with him, was he just projecting his own brother onto this brother's face? He frowned slightly and took another sip of his own caf. 

Ren broke the silence with a question. "You're all Jedi aren't you? You and Jacen and Jaina?" 

"Yeah," Anakin nodded thoughtfully. "We're all Jedi. Even Jacen." 

"Even Jacen?" 

Anakin shrugged, the arguments had just been at the forefront of his mind, but there wasn't any doubt in his mind that Jacen was a Jedi, just that they thought about the Force in very different ways. That might not be a bad thing and as Anakin thought about it he wondered if they wouldn't have come to agreement eventually. He supposed he would never know now that he was here. 

"Jacen's been…" He pressed his lips together trying to figure out what to say about Jacen to Ren after he'd just said to him that he reminded Anakin of Jacen. "We're fighting a war at home. Not like this one. It's from outside the galaxy, there is no First Order - that I know of. Jacen's been feeling that we shouldn't be fighting it the way we are, the Jedi I mean."

"You don't agree." 

"I don't agree," Anakin took another sip of the caf. "I mean, he's my brother and I respect his perspective, but I think he's wrong. We can't always respond peacefully to everything. Sometimes you've got to use lightsabers and sometimes you need to fight for something that's worth fighting for." 

"Pacifism can become a platitude under which a million wrongs are buried," Ren responded darkly. 

It made Anakin look up. Maybe it wasn't exactly the smartest thing to tell the semi-Sith brother in front of him that you needed to fight for something worth fighting for. And maybe it should tell him something about his own perspective. Maybe Jacen was more right than wrong, but that didn't feel entirely true either. Sometimes you couldn't talk your way through something, or think your way through it. Sometimes lightsabers would be necessary. Ren clearly didn't think strongly of pacifism, which made him decidedly un-Jacen-like. 

"Why are you here Ren?" Anakin asked without any heat to the question. 

One thing Anakin hadn't expected as an outcome of Vjun was that they would run into Kylo Ren there. He certainly hadn't expected that Ren would then turn around and just come with them. They'd more or less been able to talk him into turning his back on the First Order. Unless they hadn't, but the thing was as much as Anakin had seen in his seventeen years, he couldn't be that cynical. His gut told him that it had been a genuine decision to come with them. Not some lie, not a falsehood to get somewhere else. And while he might be willing to act cautiously, he had to admit that he believed wholeheartedly. It was probably easier to do when he hadn't watched the man in front of him kill his father. His jaw tightened slightly at that thought. 

Ren hadn't looked up at him with the question, but Anakin could see things working across his expression. It occurred to him that there was a reason Ren had worn the mask. His face was expressive, gentle even, and something in his eyes made Anakin irrevocably miss his older brother. There was a vulnerability maybe, although Anakin suspected Ren would hate to be told that it was there. 

"You don't seem upset by the name," Ren avoided the question and now did look up as if he expected the answer to a question he hadn't asked to be found on Anakin's face. 

"What name?"

"You just called me Ren, without thinking about it, without the irritation or impatience Breha has." 

Anakin tilted his head, his brows furrowing slightly. He had no idea where this change in subject had come from, and not the slightest clue where it was going. He still wanted the answer to his question, but he was willing to wander in the wilderness a bit if it left Ren more comfortable. He shrugged his shoulders and shook his head as he met Ren's gaze. "I don't suppose I have any attachment to any of the names you've carried, positive or negative," he offered. "You've never been 'Ben' to me. Ben is my cousin, at home, and I've hardly had any time spent with him either, he's just a baby. So Ben Solo… doesn't mean anything to me one way or another. Yet, I've only ever really met you one other time as Kylo Ren. Maybe I have a negative attachment to that name, in the sense that you killed our Dad, but I also don't feel like it's a formation to die in at the moment. You have a name preference; fine."

"You don't think calling me Ben is important to tie me to my past self?" 

Anakin wondered if Ren was purposefully trying to needle him into saying something that would annoy the other man. He determined he wasn't going to play into it. 

"I think your past self is still a part of you, just like my past self is still a part of me. But what's important in the moment is the decisions we're making right now. That's where light or dark is chosen. That's where we determine our futures. We can't erase the past, or pretend it doesn't impact us, or that we don't carry it with us, but your name is only a piece of that. Inasmuch as you might need to come to terms with the fact that you have been, and some part of you still is Ben Solo, then you might need to deal with that, but me calling you that when you don't want to be called that, doesn't seem to be the effective way of encouraging that. Besides, you said it was what Grandfather called you…" Anakin glanced up to watch his brother as he said this. 

Ren swallowed. If he was disappointed by Anakin's response it wasn't apparent in his gaze which had drifted down to the caf in front of him once more. "He said I'd understand in the future. I am - was - a Knight of Ren, but I don't think that's the sort of import that he meant." 

"He didn't tell you anything else about it?" Anakin reached for his own caf again, holding it loose in his hand as he watched his brother. 

"Just that I should look into the name in Mandalorian history. I don't know anything about that." 

Anakin shrugged. "I don't either. But maybe we can figure it out together." 

"I can do it myself." 

Anakin had to bite back a sigh. "Yeah, I know that, but I'm offering help if you want it. We're family." 

"Except for all the ways that we aren't." 

"You know me as well as you know Grandfather," Anakin pointed out. "Maybe better than at this point." 

This seemed to quiet Ren for a moment and Anakin let him sit in it. Honestly he didn't quite know what to say. Ren wasn't being violent so it did feel as if just giving him time to think might not be a bad idea. Even if Anakin still wasn't certain why Ren was here. He took a sip of his caf, his gaze floating up to watch his brother's profile. 

There were still a million emotions that fought for supremacy when he looked at Ren. Without the mask, the man was less intimidating even if he was still significantly taller than Anakin was himself. Anakin frowned, taking another sip of caf. Ren had killed Han leaving Anakin without the opportunity to ever have a decent relationship with his father again in his life. Because obviously he wasn't at home where he could work on the damaged relationship that he and Han had struggled with ever since Chewie's death there. And here there was no Han to get to know. 

Although Anakin recognized that it might not really work. His relationship with his mother was so different here. Leia wasn't the same, she didn't have the same experiences, she'd been worn in different ways. A lot of that was the fault of this person he was sharing space with. Did Ren even realize? 

"She'll hate me." 

Anakin sat back, fixing his gaze firmly on Ren's. The other man had stopped staring into the cup of caf and was instead looking at him. 

"I killed… him." 

"Your father," Anakin stated. "You should call it what it is. You killed your father. But you're wrong. At least I think you are. She can't hate you. You're still her son. Which isn't to say going back would be easy, or that she'll not be angry, but I don't think she'll hate you."

"She should then," Ren didn't flinch away from that statement. 

"Would it be easier if she did?" 

His jaw set, twitching slightly against this question. 

"What did Grandfather say to you up there? Why are you here?" 

"You're jealous." 

"That grandfather talked to you? A little," Anakin admitted this easily. "I mean, less jealous of the 'I turned to the Dark Side and Grandfather had to set me straight' part. But I've always wanted to know who Anakin Skywalker was. This name… carrying that hasn't always been easy." 

"I don't think you deserve it." Ren said this as if he were expecting Anakin to get offended when he said it. 

"Now _you're_ jealous," Anakin's gaze became more searching. 

Ren didn't respond to this immediately and when he did speak again it wasn't on the same topic. "What did you dream?" 

It was another change of subject, Ren seemed to be adept at those, but Anakin could keep up, and could keep up with the questions that remained unanswered to try again at some time during the future. His gut said keep talking, and give Ren some control over the conversation. That if there was a time to control its twist and turns it wasn't now.

And there was a connection between the two of them that he didn't share with Rey. Anakin Skywalker was Rey's grandfather as well, but in their own ways it felt like he and Ren had both been obsessed with their grandfather and his identity informed their own in a way it couldn't for Rey having not known. The answers he and Ren had come to along the way were so very different - and what had shifted to change that? He thought back to his conversation with his mother, wondering at the fact that he had felt so much reluctance from her on the topic of Anakin Skywalker. It had been so alien to him when he had first arrived, one more item in a series of things that didn't feel quite like home. 

It hadn't been Rey that had dreamed of Vjun. It had been Anakin. And Ren. And Anakin had pulled Rey along with him, thinking it was important, and it had been. There was information they'd both found out that he couldn't help but think was probably important, and without Rey would Ren have come with them? 

"In my galaxy, Vader had a fortress on Vjun as well," he offered. "I dreamed of going there, like I did when I was young and training. I felt like it was important when I dreamed it. You?" 

"I had a vision," Ren spoke quietly, but the words carried in the otherwise stillness of the hold. "Hux tried to convince me it was nothing, and I convinced myself it was nothing. I didn't know what it was of, just that it felt important. Snoke sent me on a mission, but the ship broke down - and Vjun was the nearest planet that I could get to at subspace speeds. I didn't know where I was going, except that the First Order had marked it as once having a special Imperial base." 

"You would have ignored it though?" 

Ren glared at Anakin from underneath dark curls that framed his forehead. 

"Don't take it as an offense," Anakin shrugged, "it wasn't intended to be one. I was just asking - you ended up there because your ship broke down, not because you were listening to the Force." 

"The Force intervened," Ren shrugged. "That's what you're going to say isn't it?" 

"What were you going to say?" 

"The only other explanation is coincidence isn't it?" 

Anakin didn't respond to this.

"The Force is the only logical explanation," Ren allowed irritably. "Coincidence makes no sense when we both dreamed of it. Hux was wrong. He usually is. If you want to know why I'm here," Ren threw his head back, straightening his shoulders up and drawing himself to his full height to look as intimidating as it was possible for him to look. "The Force. I had a vision of that place. I was drawn to it by the Force. My ship kriffing broke apart and landed me there. And Grandfather spoke to me." 

"Was that all you needed? The Force telling you to go home?" 

"No," Ren shook his head. "Don't be absurd." 

"I'm just repeating back what you just told me. And that's certainly what it sounds like," Anakin sighed. "Like your grandfather said 'go home' and you said okay. But it was Anakin Skywalker that spoke to you right? And it's Vader you have tried to become. I don't understand why the switch." 

"When I was a boy I thought grandfather led me to Snoke." 

This silenced Anakin.

His mind raced through what he knew of the Force, of his own past, and of the times he'd wished his Grandfather would share something with him like Old Ben had shared with his Uncle over the years. But of course it had made no sense based on what his Uncle had said. To be honest, he wasn't entirely certain that Ren could have seen Anakin Skywalker there, but the Force might work in different ways than what Anakin could possibly know and understand. He knew there were things he didn't understand, bits that Luke couldn't understand. 

"From how long ago?" He asked finally. 

Ren seemed to be gauging whether or not this was an authentic question or if Anakin was looking for some way to criticise him. Finally he set his jaw in a way that dared Anakin to criticise. 

"I felt him before I can really remember. He was a presence that was always there. I didn't know who it was at first. I tried to ignore the whispers, the feel, the belief that I could be doing something more, because everything was against everything that Luke and mother said. But all of it… much of it made sense. I never felt like I was good enough to be a Jedi like Luke. I wasn't that person, and I never was going to be, but I was going to try." 

He paused, but Anakin didn't interject. 

"It was after Breha was taken. They all blamed me. I blamed myself. I tried. For a long time I tried. And then came the news… my grandfather was Darth Vader. The man the galaxy loathed. Except that I realized I didn't. And that was when I thought I knew that the voice had been him all this time. No one trusted me after that, and -" Ren shook his head, not finishing all of the rest of it. 

"You just now realized that it wasn't him." Anakin's mind clicked the pieces together. "Here on Vjun. You spoke to Grandfather, our _actual_ Grandfather, and you realized you've been lied to." 

The pain in Ren's gaze when their eyes met caused a physical reaction in Anakin's stomach, like he'd been punched. 

"Han told me I had been used." 

"Snoke sent you on another mission so you couldn't possibly learn the truth." 

"He always encouraged me to learn about Vader. But it was always controlled. A holocron or… certain archival information -- always doled out at his time." 

"Of course," Anakin nodded, his words pressing forward swiftly. "Because your interest served him and the First Order. He didn't care that you knew about your family so long as that knowledge served him." 

Ren fell into silence, looking almost sullen as he sank against the wall again. 

"It must have been difficult learning that when you were older," Anakin frowned. "I've always known who my grandfather was. I mean, not always, but I wasn't very old when mom sat down with Uncle Luke and told me the truth about that. That I was named after the Jedi Anakin Skywalker, and that he had chosen to become Darth Vader. But Mom believed that he could have been a great Jedi, and that's why she picked that name." 

When Ren didn't say anything, Anakin finished off his caf and sat the cup down. "Before I was born, the Emperor touched me. Well, a clone of the Emperor, but I remember how that felt, that darkness and possession sliding around me. Mom fought it, but sometimes I still dream about it. I dream about what it would be like to wake up in a mask. That power," Anakin shook his head, shaking off the memory of the dream. 

The last one hadn't been that long ago. Not since he'd arrived in this galaxy, but perhaps that had something to do with the reality of that dream standing in front of him. 

"Look, I could stand here and pretend that I could never be you. That'd I'd never have made the choices that you made. But if Mom hadn't fought that power off? If the Emperor's Clone had lived? If I'd lost my brother or sister? _If_ … there's a hundred if's, and I'd like to say that I've never been angry, and never killed anyone, but under the right circumstances? If I felt cornered? It's there. That history, that… other me that I could become. And I know that." 

Anakin could hear the sound of Chewie through the door and wondered if they were about to be interrupted. He supposed it didn't matter - he'd said what he needed to. 

"Is that why you let me come?" 

Ren was staring straight at him, and Anakin nodded. "I guess so. Anyone who doesn't recognize the dark in them, can't find the light." 

"What if I don't want the light?" 

Anakin watched him. He didn't know exactly what to say to that. If Ren had no inclination towards change, what was he doing here? But then he wondered if Ren even knew what he wanted at this point. It was a journey. Every single bit of it was a journey, and if there was space in the in-between - there could be space in the in-between, couldn't there? 

The door slid open, letting Rey and Finn back in, Chewie following them. Ren's attention shifted from Anakin to the three newcomers, and Anakin could sense the change in alertness that followed their reappearance. He hadn't relaxed with Anakin, not exactly, but it was so much closer to relaxation than what Anakin could feel from him right now. 

"We're getting close," Rey said to Anakin. "I figured Finn and I should come back." 

Anakin joined Chewie in the cockpit shortly after. They were joined by Mara and the next period of time was spent as they arrived and received security clearance into the Hapes system. Mara had been given a special diplomatic code, and when they handed it over, it seemed that everything was cleared immediately. 

Mara hadn't been exactly forthcoming about where the Hapes system fit into the Republic, and Anakin supposed it wasn't the time to ask questions. For not the first time he was reminded of how odd it felt to be sitting on the outside of a situation and not knowing anything about it. Before the war, before Yavin IV and Myrkr, that would have bothered him a lot more. It still wasn't comfortable, but Anakin had begin to lean into living in discomfort, and this was just a continuation of that. 

Anakin took the coordinates and flew them in, realizing as he flew in low over the planet, noting the capital city Ta'a Chume'Dan below them, that he knew where they were going. Or at least he suspected that he did. He had never flown it himself, and he had only been there once, but as they pulled into a valley and landed the _Falcon_ on a docking platform near the side of a lake, Anakin knew he'd been there before. Well, not this place specifically, but the equivalent in his galaxy, and while he was certain there were differences, it had been long enough ago that he'd been there that he knew he was unlikely to recognize them, and that was almost a relief. 

He closed down the _Falcon_ 's systems, and then turned to Mara. 

"They'll have someone to meet us, likely," Mara responded to his unspoken question. "We should get Rey and the others and go check it out." 

They disembarked the _Falcon_ as a group. Mara first, Rey and Finn next, Anakin with Ren, and Chewie bringing up the rear. 

"Hapes?" Recognition lit in Ren's eyes as they stepped off the platform.

Anakin looked over at him startled, but he didn't have time to follow-up with Ren on how he recognized it or if he'd spent time there before as a small group approached them. The expected security was not a surprise, but what did startle Anakin was the woman leading the group. Tall, with her shoulders straight as a board, dressed as Anakin might have remembered the girl from home, was Tenel Ka Djo, the princess of Hapes. 

"You made it without incident," she addressed Mara directly. 

"We did, the codes worked well, thank you for your quick decision in this matter." 

"You will remember Breha Solo, of course, although it has likely been a while since you've seen her. And Chewbacca." 

"And Ben," Tenel Ka stepped forward, her grey eyes seemingly locked on Kylo Ren's face. "It has been a while. We thought you were dead." 

"I might as well have been," these words were just barely audible as Ben stared at the boots he was wearing. 

"There will be time for further explanations I suspect," Mara said. "We hope though that we will not need to bother you too much. This is Finn, and Anakin."

"Good to meet you," Tenel Ka greeted Finn before turning her attention to Anakin. "And you will be the one from the other galaxy. The youngest son, Mara said." 

"And yes, in my galxy we're friends though. We trained together and worked together some. It was for that reason I thought of here. I didn't know - well, I'm glad to see you. And that we are not all total strangers." 

Tenel Ka switched her gaze from Anakin back to Ben and then she shook her head. "No, we are not. You are welcome here, for as long as you need. Do you think the First Order will come looking for you?" 

"We hope not," Rey answered this. "It's not impossible though." 

"We'll double our patrols out in the consortium. It will be difficult for them to get through without a guide. You have been here before, but even the Empire largely left us alone." 

"We are hopeful the First Order will do likewise," Mara responded. 

Tenel Ka led them into one of the royal palaces. Anakin had been there once when he was a child, and a simple question to Tenel Ka confirmed it held the same sort of retreat for her family in this galaxy as it did in his, which meant it was out of the way. Tenel Ka had done her best to minimise the likelihood that anyone would know that they were there as those servants who worked in the palace were likely to be among some of the most loyal and able to keep quiet, and the droids, which were likely to fill in most roles, would have extremely high security clearance. As they walked along the outdoor corridor, Anakin found his eyes drifting up to the mountains that surrounded them. Millennia ago, when air and space travel was unheard of, the location would have provided most of the security needed simply because of terrain. While that was no longer the case, it was true that they would still be secluded, and unlikely to be noticed by most people, and hopefully unlikely to be tracked by the Order assuming that Ren wasn't lying about any further tracking devices. 

_Or simply didn't know that he had another one_ , Anakin's mind filled in for him helpfully. 

Their final destination was a set of rooms along a slightly secluded corridor. Anakin took a room with Ren, Finn and Chewie took the one next to them, and Rey on their other side while Mara took one across the hall. They were clustered then, although Anakin wasn't certain it would be enough if Ren decided to run. The truth was, and it was a truth that had been sitting in more as they'd traveled further away from Vjun, that they were operating on a ton of faith. There weren't enough guards in this palace that were trained well enough to hold Ren should he decide to sneak off in the middle of the night. 

It was the recognition of this that had made Anakin suggest to Rey and Mara that they meet as soon as they get settled and talk briefly with Tenel Ka. After a brief discussion of who would stay with Ren - something that Tenel Ka had observed dispassionately but Anakin suspected with some curiosity - Chewie had said he would come to their quarters after. 

It was about thirty minutes later when they met in a small dining room at the end of the wing. Tenel Ka was there with one of her female warriors, but otherwise alone. As Mara, Rey, Anakin and Finn entered, she stood and turned piercing eyes to them. 

"What have you not told me Mara?" 

Mara didn't respond to this right away, instead stepping into the room behind the four of them and crossing to the large arch doorway behind Tenel Ka and seeming to check it out. As Mara did her security check, Anakin had time to really look at Tenel Ka. On her belt hung a lightsaber - something that he hadn't entirely expected - he had been told the Jedi had been destroyed. He had assumed, wrongly apparently, that she had never trained. 

"You're a Jedi," he blurted out, taking the attention away from Tenel Ka's question. 

She looked at him and considered for a moment. "Yes, as are you, but that doesn't answer my question." 

Anakin shook his head. "I'd been told all the Jedi had been destroyed." 

"And I had been told Ben Solo is dead. But here we are." 

Rey sighed, and Anakin pulled his focus back on what was the here and now. There would be times to compare universes later, perhaps. "He isn't dead," Anakin stated unnecessarily. 

"This is fact, and it is obviously him, but he feels different." Tenel Ka hadn't added the question, but it was the foundation lying underneath her words. 

"Probably all that dark side and death," Finn muttered, hardly loud enough to be heard by anyone that wasn't just next to him, but Anakin gave him a look anyway. 

"It was easiest to believe that he had died," Mara answered Tenel Ka's question simply. "Most people believed he did." 

Tenel Ka's eyes narrowed. "But he didn't. He was part of it." 

"I'm afraid so, yes." 

Tenel Ka was not easily affected, but Anakin could sense the ripple of dismay that was immediately shored up by a steely core of neutrality that Anakin associated with her more often than not. 

"We needed some place that neither the Republic nor the First Order was likely to look for him. Hapes was the first place that I thought of," Anakin offered by way of explanation, trying unsuccessfully to keep the apology for having brought this trouble to her door out of his voice. But even if he was sorry, he still couldn't think of another place to have gone. "Ren turned himself over to us. He doesn't want to be known as Ben anymore, he says he spoke to our grandfather in the fortress, and he came with us." 

"You believe him."

"I do," Anakin said, before anyone else could come in. "I know it's possible he's lying or that it's a trick, but I do believe him." 

"I want to believe him," Rey offered, less emphatically than Anakin had been able to say. 

"I'm not sure I believe him," Finn shrugged honestly. "But I'm hoping they're right at this point, and so far he's not killed anyone so…" 

"That is usually a good sign," Tenel Ka's lips tightened, and Anakin almost believed she was holding a smirk behind them, but the moment passed quickly. "I can think of no reason this would be a place he would want to cause harm to, specifically, so we will hope that you are in the right to believe him. We were friends once, Ben and I, and I had thought him dead. I'm not certain if finding him alive here and now and in this way is hope or not. But for the friendship we once shared, I will continue to offer this place. Do you know for how long?" 

Mara shook her head. "We're still figuring that out, and we've hardly had time to consider it really."

"We have information that should go to Luke," Rey paced the floor. "But we don't want to bring Ben - Ren - to Luke. It seems that if he's playing a trick, that would be the most obvious one to be made."

"To get to Luke to kill him," Tenel Ka nodded her head. "Fact, this would be the easiest way to do that. He has been long missing has he not?" 

"Luke has been out of touch for most of the time following the incident with the Jedi trainees," Mara affirmed. 

"I have told them at the main palace that I am taking a bit of a holiday without the entourage. I will stay for a few days here as you determine what will be the best next move." 

"We don't know what to do with the information we gained on Vjun," Rey sighed. "And with watching Ren, I've hardly had time to really think about it. I'm still worried that he's going to do something to Chewie and run." 

"Whatever you and Anakin found is important, right? That's got to be part of the reason why we were there," Finn spoke-up, looking between Anakin and Rey. "Y'all got your Jedi cred and information." 

"But we don't have any idea how it fits," Rey shook her head. "Yes, it's probably important, but in what way? To what? That's the question." 

"We may need Uncle Luke to help us unravel that question," Anakin frowned. "Which means we've got to determine what to do with Ren so that we're not putting them in the same place if it's a bad idea to do so." 

"Do you really think this is a trick to get to Skywalker?" Tenel Ka asked. 

Rey and Anakin looked at each other and Anakin shrugged. 

"If it's a trick," Mara responded simply. "That is merely the most obvious reason for such a pretense. There could be many." 

"Funnily enough, that doesn't make me feel better," Finn raised an eyebrow at Mara. 

Mara simply grinned, showing teeth. Anakin shook his head, a smile crossing his lips. Of course Mara would his consider that a joke. 

"We've got a lot of things in front of us," Anakin sighed. 

"Ren, the stuff you guys found on Vjun, and then the larger whole war, Snoke, First Order picture," Finn listed them off easily. 

"When you put it that way," Rey tilted her head over at him teasing. "They don't seem nearly so insurmountable, just like a daily to-do list." 

Finn chuckled and bowed slightly. "You don't get to be the only dose of optimism in the group."

This brought a smile even to Tenel Ka's lips. "Then it is settled that you will be here for a few days. I will be in the east wing, and we can speak further and determine how best to proceed from here." 

"We appreciate it," Rey gave Tenel Ka a smile. "I don't really remember you at all, but I remember my brother speaking of you. We'll try not to cause you any trouble as we sort through things." 

"As Anakin noted I am a Jedi, or at least I've had some training, even if I was unable to complete it. If I can help," she offered quietly. "My first responsibility must be to my people, but if I can provide something to you, to fight this darkness that is threatening the galaxy - ultimately, that seems important to the health of my people." 

"Thank you," Finn nodded. "The First Order have a lot of resources and even with Starkiller destroyed, they're still a threat." 

"They've been making raids across the galaxy, and as you say, it is unlikely they will venture here early on, yet…" 

"It is not impossible they would come later," Tenel Ka nodded. "I think we all understand that. So we must determine what your next course of action will be, and I will help with that where I can." 

"And if we don't trust him to see Luke?" Rey frowned and was looking at Anakin. 

Anakin pulled in his breath and straightened his shoulders back as he thought about this. There was no doubt in his mind that they would need to see Luke about what they had found in the Jedi temple on Vjun. There were too many pieces of the puzzle that they didn't understand while his Uncle with his experience might be able to help them pull edges together. But the idea of leaving Ren with even one or two of them while the others went to Luke didn't set well in his stomach. Equally unlikely felt the idea of Luke coming here. 

It was one thing, after all, for Anakin to be willing to risk his own life by sitting alone with a cup of caf on a ship where there was no real escape outside of taking over the whole thing, and it was another for him to risk the life of the most famous Jedi in the entire galaxy, and likely the only one of his caliber and experience. 

"We'll work that out when we get to it," he said finally. "If we need to we'll take one or two of us to see Luke. We'll figure it out."

"But probably," Mara suggested as she stood up. "We'll all figure that out a little bit better if we've had some food, and some real rest, which isn't something we've gotten much of. Anakin are you sure you're all right in the same room as Ren?" 

"Yeah," Anakin nodded firmly. "Someone needs to be with him, and…" he paused, wondering. Was he making a huge mistake? But he had extended trust, and he and Ren had talked, and still Anakin's gut said it would be all right. "I think of everyone here, I might make the most sense."

For a second he wasn't certain if Rey was going to agree with him, but then she nodded. "I agree with Anakin. Anakin has a lot of training - more in line with the amount that Ren has - and Ren probably has the least reason to be antagonistic towards him." 

Finn nodded his agreement. "Yeah, and probably that goes both ways. They've only really tried to kill each other the once." 

Tenel Ka raised an eyebrow. "Then that's settled. You should all get food, and then rest, and tomorrow we will meet to determine next steps and how and when we should contact Master Skywalker." 

There was a hint of a presence in Anakin's senses and he whirled around just as Luke Skywalker's voice filled the room. 

"Or I could meet with you tomorrow to help you with those steps." 

"Shit!" Finn hissed, staring incredulously. 

"Luke, I wasn't expecting you," Mara's voice gave away no surprise that she might have felt. 

Anakin found himself looking into the face of his Uncle, or at least this galaxy's version of him. The man in front of him was about his height, just like his Uncle at home, but he wore a beard where the Luke Skywalker that Anakin knew didn't, and his eyes looked a good deal more tired than what Anakin had grown up with. But recently even at home he'd noticed exhaustion and uncertainty underneath his Uncle's calm Jedi shoulders, and certainly with what Anakin had read about what had happened to the Jedi, it was equally bad, maybe worse than what had happened with the Yuuzhan Vong. 

He realized that after having given Rey's hand a small squeeze, Luke had turned his gaze to him and he straightened his shoulders under the glance. 

"I'm Anakin," he offered. How much did his Uncle really know?

"Of course you are," Luke's face softened and a smile pulled the edges of his lips up. "You have been told, no doubt, that you look like your father." 

"Once or twice," Anakin grinned, only increasing the effect. "Not to be rude, but how are you here?" 

"I flew an X-wing," Luke responded, wryly, his blue eyes warming as he glanced to Mara with a smirk. 

"That's not what I meant," Anakin couldn't keep from chuckling though. 

It was probably going to make things more difficult with Luke being here. He ought to be worried about what was going to happen. He had just been thinking about whether or not it was a problem to put Ren and Luke in the same place and here his Uncle was, showing up and existing in the same place, on the same planet, putting himself in a location where Ren would be right here and know where Luke was. Despite all of this there was some relief too. 

Anakin had read all the histories, knew that things had gone wrong, and knew that this wasn't going to be simple, but his Uncle had always been able to help him sort through things. Even if ultimately they came to different conclusions, Anakin trusted his Uncle to have experience and knowledge that held value. And despite everything else he'd been through since getting here, there was something nice in having that offered without him having to search it out. 

"I knew this was where I needed to be currently. Ben is here?" 

"Yeah," Rey offered, stepping forward. "He's currently in another room with Chewie. Anakin was going to stay with him. He came with us, but we don't know why." 

Anakin nodded. "He just came with us, he said he spoke to grandfather on Vjun - where Vader used to have his Fortress." 

"He may just be trying to get to you thought, use us to do that," Finn pointed out their worse fears. 

Anakin glanced between Finn and Luke and nodded. "That's the worry we've had. We were trying to figure out if it was… if we should put you two in the same place." 

"If it is a worry, then we'll uncover it," Luke said. "The Force led me to believe that I should be here. However, perhaps for tonight I will stay in a wing other than the ones you are in, if that is all right Tenel Ka?" He turned to the Hapan Queen. 

"I will have the servants prepare a room in our wing, Master Skywalker." 

"I haven't heard that for a while," Luke smiled, and for a moment he looked younger. "That would be ideal, thank you." 

"It is our pleasure to host you here," Tenel Ka responded. "I will see to it if I'm not needed further here." 

Luke watched her go before he turned back to them. "I suspect you will have a good deal to fill me in on, Breha, and Anakin as well. Tomorrow morning may we meet before breakfast, and perhaps not yet tell Ben of my presence here." 

"Won't he be able to tell?" Rey asked.

"My presence is drawn in," Luke said quietly. He might if he were looking, but if he has no reason to look, it's unlikely I think." 

Anakin nodded. "I won't say anything. I suspect we'll both be pretty tired anyway." 

"Are you sure it's safe, rooming with him? Sleeping in there with him?" Finn raised his eyebrows at Anakin. "I wouldn't be able to." 

Anakin didn't dismiss Finn's question because it was one that had crossed his mind multiple times already. "I'm willing to risk it," he finally said. "I can't explain why I think it's right, I just do. It's just - it's like a whisper that says 'trust him'. Maybe not in everything, maybe not anything else honestly, but here, and in this particular thing, yes." 

Finn shrugged and Rey offered him a hopeful smile: "Then may the Force be with us."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here we are at the end of part two. So what about part three you wonder? Well, I have giant broad brush sketches for it right now, which means my current intention is to do some plotting throughout May and to hopefully have something plotted and ready to begin towards the end of the month. 
> 
> Thank you to everyone who has read and commented and given me the joy to keep moving forward!

**Author's Note:**

> It is possible the mature rating is overzealous for this work, but it felt like the safest bet as there will be more language (thank you Kylo), and probably a bit more implied sexual situations in this part than in the previous. I have no intention of going too graphic in sex or violence, if that's something that matters to you. 
> 
> I think way too much about Solo kids in any universe, and if you relate to that, or just want writing updates as I push forward into taking all my rambly ideas for Part Two into something more refined, please feel free to follow me on [tumblr](http://jedihafren.tumblr.com/).


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